I Am Wolf
by Poi Ra
Summary: What if Harry Potter descended from the Quileute tribe and what if he carried the gene. How does his first encounter with a vampire changes the course of his life and the future of the wizarding world. Chapter 1 edited.
1. Chapter 1

** I AM WOLF**

**DISCLAIMER: I do not own Harry Potter or the Twilight.**

** Prologue**

"You look very dashing dear."

Harry James Potter, the boy-who-lived and the recently dubbed chosen one of the wizarding world shook his head slightly. That along with a small sigh was his only reaction for the comment made by the persona of the magical mirror located in the sixth year boy's dormitory of the Gryffindor tower.

These types of mirrors, which were rather common in the wizarding world, had stopped freaking him out by the end of his very first stay at the Burrow, during the summer of his first year at the Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

He was currently dressed in the bottle green robes that had bought him from the Diagon Alley, for the occasion of Yule Ball during his fourth year at Hogwarts. Apart from feeling a bit snug around his upper arms and shoulders, the robes still fitted him rather well.

Something that did nothing but to remind the sixteen year old of the fact the he was the shortest one among all the boys and most of the girls in his year. Standing only at 5'4'' he was a good bit shorter than lot of the lower years too, ten years of malnutrition would do that to anyone.

"Damn the Dursley's." he mumbled to himself as he attacked his mop of raven black hair which he had inherited from his deceased father, with a comb intent in taming it.

Harry had come to accept his short stature a long while ago and it really didn't bother him much, apart from having to look up at the faces of whomever he had to talk to.

Besides he had far bigger problems to worry about than his height. Chief among them being a monster named Tom Morvolo Riddle or better known by his self styled title Lord Voldemort. The Dark Lord was hell bent on bringing about the premature end of the last living Potter in the magical world.

"Are you ready mate, the party started almost an hour ago." the voice of one of his dorm mates echoed through the almost empty room.

Dean Thomas would be accompanying his girlfriend Ginny Weasley, Harry's best mates little sister and the only Weasley girl to be born in over seven generations, to Professor Slughorn's Christmas party as her date.

Much to his silent relief, Luna Lovegood, a rather good friend of him had graciously agreed to accompany him to the said party as his date when he had asked her a couple of days ago.

The portly potions master had insisted everyone on bringing a date for the party and Harry feared he would be unable to get one. He still had difficulty asking girls out, ever since the one real date he had with Cho ended up being a disaster.

He was the chosen one for Merlin's sake, not the Casanova. And he thought with Voldemort after his head it would be best if he stayed away from romance, he did not want to endanger some poor girl by dating her.

"Relax Dean, I'm all set to go." he said making one last heroic attempt to flatten his hair, which had the mocha skinned sixth year snickering with suppressed laughter.

"Give it up mate, there is nothing in the world that can tame that rat's nest of yours. Everyone thinks it's the Potter family curse and I'm inclined to agree with them."

Presenting the other teen with a mock glare, Harry picked up his wand from his bedside table and stowed it into the pocket of his robes.

The two friends then made their way down the stairs to the Gryffindor common room, where they found the beautiful Miss Weasley along with one of Harry's best friend Hermione Granger who looked equally beautiful, chatting amongst themselves in hushed tones.

"Hello Hermione, Ginny. You both look very beautiful this evening." he said smirking slightly.

Twin blushes blossomed on their cheeks and they rewarded him with two brilliant smiles.

He noticed that his other best friend, Ron Weasley, was nowhere to be seen in the cozy common room. But Harry was wise enough not to question the two females about his whereabouts as they were both very displeased with the tallest Weasley male at the moment.

'Besides, I have a very good guess about what he would be doing and I have absolutely no wish to know the location of the said activity.'

"Stop trying to steal my girlfriend Potter." Dean yelled comically while waving his fist at the shorter boy in what was supposed to be a 'threatening gesture', making the two girls giggle slightly.

Harry acted the part of the sufficiently cowed young man to add humor to the situation. They need all the humor they can get in these troubled times.

"Thank you for the complement Harry. Do you need to wait for your date or can we get going now?" Ginny asked while looping her arms with that of Dean's, while Hermione looked at him in suspicion.

"You do have a date, don't you Harry?" Hermione asked, a hint of warning in her tone.

"Yes I do have a date Mione. She is currently waiting for me in the great hall and I need to get going before she thinks that I stood her up." he answered while looking at the battered watch on his wrist.

"Well who is it then?" Hermione asked sounding pleased while the other two looked at him, apparently interested in his answer.

"Luna Lovegood." he said and started making his way towards the portrait hole.

"Loony Lovegood, you are going to the party with Loony Lovegood. Harry, you didn't hit your head somewhere and got a concussion because of it, did you?" asked Dean surprised, causing his girlfriend to let out a giggle even as she slapped him on his arm.

"I pretty sure Thomas, but you will have one if you continue teasing my date."

Harry stated, only half jokingly as he made his way towards the portrait hole to pick up Luna for the party.

The Great Hall was filled with the students happily chattering with each other on topics ranging from the end of the term exams, the war raging in their world, to their plans for winter holidays that begun the next day.

Harry had a mild suspicion that old Slughorn had arranged the party specifically on the last day of the term so that he would not be able to find any reason to avoid it. It just proved that no matter how cheery the said wizard acted around him, Horace Slughorn was still a Slytherin at his heart.

"There you are Harry, I feared that Voldling Harnappers had gotten hold you."

The dreamy voice of Luna Lovegood, fifth year Ravenclaw, ex-DA member and most importantly his date for the evening brought him back from the world of his thoughts. Looking at the direction the voice had come from, Harry received what would be the first shock of the evening.

"Wow!"

Luna had replaced her butterbeer earrings and necklace she usually wore with ones made from solid gold, simple and elegant in design. Her white blond hair which was usually wore in a single braid now fell to her shoulders in soft curls held in place with the help of several small silver pins shaped like that of birds.

"I-I… L-Luna.."

The sleeveless royal blue gown hugged her upper body rather fetchingly and flared out from her waist down past her knees.

A pair of dark blue heels covering her feet completed her ensemble .

"Merlin's Beard, you look breathtaking Luna." Harry said, after he had finally gotten his stammering under control.

The fifth year smiled radiantly at him, her silvery grey eyes sparkling in delight at his complement.

He had never seen the girl look or act like this before and he realized from the thunderstruck look on their faces, neither had most of the students present in the great hall.

"Thank you Harry. Padma helped me a lot, even lent me her jewels. She thought you would appreciate them more than my regular ones." informed the taller girl dreamily, as she wrapped her arms around him in a tight hug before releasing him and looping her arms through his.

"Padma's right. They do look good on you Luna." Harry said recovering from his shock of the sudden hug, only Hermione and hugged him like that.

Offering him another radiant smile, Luna proceeded to lead him towards the ever moving stairs of the magical castle while chattering on about Crumple Horned Snorkacks, Bumbling Humdingers and various other creatures and government scandals that the wizarding world should be made aware of.

"And now that Scrimgeour had become the Minister, Fudge has finally lost his army of Heliopaths to him. They are very much attracted to power after all." Luna stated dreamily.

"Maybe he would use them to fight the Death Eaters and Voldemort." he commented as they climbed yet another set of stairs.

A small smile formed and grew on the chosen one's face as he listened to his date list the supposed abilities of the Minister's Heliopaths, realizing the fact that no matter how she looked or acted, Luna will always be the same girl who stood up for her friends and believed in strange creatures.

Harry was sure that he would treasure her friendship as long as he lived, however long that maybe.

"The party is very loud Harry." said Luna, tightening her grip a little on his arm.

"Indeed it is Luna, indeed it is." Harry replied while smiling reassuringly at the slightly taller girl. He wondered whether it was her first time going to such a large gathering as she had not attended the Yule Ball, being only a third year at that time.

The noise from the party in the potions master's office could be easily heard from the other side of the corridor and Harry had to wonder if the man had somehow managed to stuff all the population of Hogesmedge village inside the said room.

'Or the whole of the Diagon alley from the racket coming from his office.'

He honestly wouldn't be surprised if his potions professor somehow managed to accomplish that, after all, the man horded people like the goblins horded gold.

Reaching the doorway which had been charmed to glow a deep emerald green color like those muggle night clubs he had heard about, Harry stopped in surprise when a room that was half the size of the great hall greeted his eyes.

'Ah, undetectable space expansion charms.' Harry thought recognizing the magic from his stay in the magical tents during the occasions of the Quidditch world cup and the first task of the Triwizard Tournament.

He led Luna in to the crowded, brightly lit room illuminated by a large red lamp hanging from the center of the ceiling that was filled with real fairies. The ceiling and walls were decorated with the use of numerous emerald, crimson, and gold hangings, giving everyone the impression of being inside an actual tent.

"It's rather nice, isn't it Harry?" questioned Luna from his side after taking in the appearance of their surroundings.

"Yes it is Luna." Harry agreed with his date. 'The old snake certainly knows how to throw a party, I have to agree with that.'

Loud singing accompanied by what sounded like mandolins issued from a distant corner. A haze of pipe smoke hung over several elderly warlocks deep in conversation, and a number of house-elves were negotiating their way squeakily through the forest of knees, obscured by the heavy silver platters of food they were bearing, so that they looked like little roving tables.

'Thank Merlin that no one is dancing.' he thought gratefully, remembering the disaster that was his dancing during the Yule Ball.

Their potions master found them within a minute after they had entered the magically enlarged room, he suspected the use of some proximity charms on the doorway.

"Harry my boy, so good that you can make it to my party, I am thrilled. Now who might this lovely young lady be?" asked Horace Slughorn while shaking his hand rather enthusiastically, a large smile adorning his beefy face.

"This is Luna Lovegood sir, fifth year Ravenclaw and my date for this evening." Harry introduced and the portly man proceeded to shake the blonde girl's had much more politely, he was rather thankful for that as his hand still ached a little from the man's rather strong grip.

"I have lot of people that I would like you to meet Harry, almost all of them old students of mine and they are all very excited at the prospect of meeting you." the potions professor boomed once he let go of Luna's hands.

Grasping his most famous student ever by his free arm, the portly man literally dragged Harry towards one of the groups of witches and wizards happily conversing with each other. Luna was dragged along with him due to her hand looped with his, though she didn't seem to be bothered by it.

"Harry, this is Gwenog Jones, captain of the Holyhead Harpies. Gwen, meet Harry Potter." Slughorn said grandly, introducing the attractive brunette in her late twenties. She had a good natured face and an open smile that would have made Harry feel at home, if he had been paying attention that is.

"It's a pleasure to meet you Miss Jones." Harry muttered mechanically while shaking the offered hand.

His mind was too busy trying to make sense of the strange scent which had assaulted his senses as soon as they had crossed halfway across the large room.

"This is Luna Lovegood, a good friend of mine." he introduced, trying to shake the scent away.

The scent was sweeter than any perfume he had ever smelt before and it was strangely familiar even though he was pretty sure that he had never smelt it before. A scent that would probably have made almost everyone loses their mind in its magic, if they even got a whiff of it.

But it did something entirely different to him.

"I will leave you to get acquainted." he heard the voice of his potions professor as if it came from the end of a very long tunnel.

Harry nodded his head absent mindedly.

He didn't see the said man move away from them towards another group.

"I have a friend who is a very good fan of yours Miss Jones." Luna said, smiling dreamily at the famous quidditch player after a few seconds.

Harry didn't hear a single word of it as he was lost in his mind, trying to control his emotions.

The scent made the hairs at the back of his neck stand up in warning and brought forth a murderous rage the likes of which he had never ever felt before in his short life time, not even at Bellatrix Lestrange when she had murdered his godfather right in front of his eyes.

That naturally both confused and surprised the hell out of him, almost to the point of distracting the teen from the said rage which somehow felt almost genetic in its nature, as it filled every cell of his small, scrawny, underfed body.

'What in the name of Merlin's baggy pants is this smell?' Harry screamed mentally.

Luna's elbow to his ribs brought him back to the land of the living and he had to use every bit of his self control to keep his mouth shut so that he wouldn't snap at the dreamy eyed Ravenclaw.

She wasn't the one responsible for the scent and she didn't even know what is happening to him. Still the boy-who-lived could not prevent the frown from his face as he looked at the taller girl who tilted her head towards the woman standing by her side.

"I beg your pardon Miss Jones, but I'm afraid that my mind wandered off for a moment." he apologized trying to ignore the scent which was getting stronger with time.

"It's quite alright Harry and please call me Gwen, Miss Jones makes me feel old. I was just saying that my cousin Megan from Ravenclaw said that you were the best seeker in the school and a natural flyer." Gwenog Jones stated smiling rather pleasantly, not at all looking upset that he had just ignored her.

Had he not been filled with enough rage to murder someone, Harry would have surely blushed at the complement from the captain of the Holyhead Harpies.

"I am sure she's exaggerating Gwen. I saw Krum at the world cup and he's loads better than me."

Harry wasn't aware of what he had just said as he was too busy trying to contain the fury roaring through his veins, enough fury to murder someone in cold blood, like the owner of the damned scent for instance.

He did not want to embarrass himself in front of the crowded room by performing accidental magic since his emotions felt eerily similar to the time he had blown up his aunt, only a lot stronger.

"Victor had been flying ever since he had started walking properly Harry, he is the best seeker in the world for a reason. Moving on, have you considered the possibility of playing professionally after your graduation at Hogwarts?" she asked, looking a bit more serious now.

Despite all the distractions, Harry couldn't help but stare at the brunette with a look of incredulousness gracing his features.

"Are you inviting me Gwen, I thought that the Holyhead Harpies were an all witch team." he asked after wiping the look on his face. Gwen smirked slightly.

"You are absolutely right Harry but the Puddlemore United isn't, and they are both owned by the same group of families." she explained.

"Puddlemore United, really. This isn't due to me being the boy-who-lived is it?" Harry asked a bit suspiciously.

The scent was getting stronger to his senses and he had to use every ounce of his concentration to listen to her answer.

"Of course not Harry, the offer is due to your extraordinary skills as a seeker. The spot of the reserve seeker is yours after graduation if you want the job." she said.

He was flattered, he really was but he couldn't accept the offer for several reasons, Voldemort being the main one.

"Thank you for the offer Gwen but I already have plans on joining the Aurors after my graduation." Harry said with genuine regret in his voice.

The woman looked really crestfallen but Harry paid only half a mind as the other half was too busy trying to hold his anger at bay.

The scent had become almost maddening by now and he realized that he had to put some distance between it and himself if he want to avoid an explosion. Performing a bubblehead charm in the middle of a party was not a good idea.

Harry suddenly spotted the artificial window on the far end of the room which was charmed to blow a fresh, gentle breeze and a very familiar person standing next to it.

"I think I just spotted a friend over there, thank you for the offer once again Gwen. Enjoy the party Ladies."

Harry said abruptly with a forced smile to the puzzled brunette before dragging Luna towards the said part of the room where he had seen his best female friend, trying to blend in with the shadows prevalent there.

His best friend let out a startled squeak when he placed his hand on her shoulders to get her attention.

"Harry! Don't sneak up on me like that, you almost gave me a heart attack." Hermione whispered hoarsely while placing a hand over her chest to calm racing heart.

"I did not, you were just too busy trying to become a portrait on the wall that you didn't notice my approach. Who are you hiding from anyway?" he asked while trying to pinpoint the source of the strange scent now that he was able to control the murderous rage.

The task was easier said than done, considering the sheer number of people present inside the room and the scent from the numerous platters of food carried by the elves didn't help in the least bit.

'When did I become so attuned to the smells anyway.'

"Cormac, he's my date to the party and apparently he loves talking about himself." the bushy haired female said in a resigned tone of voice while looking around quite nervously, as if the said person would materialize next to them.

That managed to get his attention from his quest to locate the source of the mysterious scent and Harry James Potter just shook his head in resignation. For being someone who was known as the smartest witch in their whole year, Hermione can be pretty stupid sometimes.

"What in the name of Merlin made you to invite that prat to the party then?" he asked while tilting his head to a side. Hermione had the decency to blush while Luna continued gazing at them with the dreamy look in her eyes.

"Cormac irritated Ronald a lot." she muttered in embarrassment. Harry let out a snort and rolled his eyes at the folly of his best friend before starting to smile slightly as the humor of the situation she had managed land herself into caught up to him.

"Ronald can be a bit immature at times, he has the largest Wracksprut infection I have ever seen on anyone before." said Luna in her usual dreamy voice making the two sixth years let out a snort simultaneously.

That had to be the understatement of this century.

"A bit, Luna some of the first years acts with more maturity than that prat." Hermione fumed at the shorter girl.

Harry had to agree with her statement. Best friend or not, Ronald Weasley had the maturity of a twelve year old and he had experienced it personally numerous times.

The blonde just hummed in reply, the dreamy smile never leaving her face but Harry thought that he saw the same sparkle in her eyes that he had seen when he first met her in the great hall. He grabbed a mug of hot butterbeer from an elf passing by him and by doing so spotted someone walking towards their little corner of the room.

"Mione, a dashing young man by the name of Cormac Maclaggen is making his way towards our little group even as I speak." he stated rather innocently, making the brunette take off towards the other side of the room with surprising speed while managing to remain hidden from her date.

"Must be all the trips to the Library with books weighing at least twenty pounds." he mumbled to himself.

Luna seemed to have heard as she nodded her head while humming a little louder, starring at the fairy filled lamp on the ceiling.

A few seconds later, the tall form of Cormac Maclaggen came to stop in front of the couple with a hopeful look plastered on his face.

"Hey Potter, have you seen Hermione around? She disappeared after asking me to fetch some drinks for both of us."

"She left a few minutes earlier Maclaggen, something about getting more books from the Library and packing all her stuff for the train tomorrow." Harry lied smoothly after sipping taking a sip from his mug.

"Oh, thank you very much then." Maclaggen mumbled not at all looking dejected on the prospect of getting ditched by his date.

The fifth year placed the drinks carelessly on the platter carried by an elf before moving towards a group of witches from Hufflepuff house.

"He really is a prat." he muttered slightly surprised.

Seconds trickled by in silence between the couple, with Harry sipping his mug of warm butterbeer while trying to identify the source of the scent and his date looking at a group of Ravenclaws standing not far away from them.

It was she who broke the comfortable silence a few minutes later.

"Do you mind if I go speak to some of my house mates Harry?" asked Luna, gazing at a group that had primarily the members of DA from last year.

"Not at all." he replied, waving his free hand in the direction of the said group and watched in some amusement as she almost skipped through the room.

Draining the last of his drink from the mug, he leaned against the cold castle wall and closed his eyes while trying to clear his mind using the techniques he had learned from the Occlumency book he had purchased with the help of Hermione the previous summer.

Harry had spent at least thirty minutes every day practicing the said techniques before he went to sleep, ever since he had received the book. Although he had yet to find any success in even the most basic of them, he never stopped doing it.

'Maybe Snape was right for once and I have no proficiency in the field of mind magic.'

Ten minutes later he opened his eyes with a fierce scowl adorning his face. It was very apparent that the exercises were more futile than usual, thanks to that wretched scent that stubbornly lingered on the warm air inside the crowded room. He understood the fact that he needed to get out of the said room to get some peace of mind.

It took him a few moments to get his emotions under some semblance of control and Harry started looking around the room for his date, after failing to locate her among the group of Ravenclaws near him.

The blond was nowhere to be seen.

'She didn't ditch me did she?' he thought worriedly before discarding the notions as a ridiculous one. Luna was not that kind of person, she had to be somewhere in this room. Making a quick decision to find her, he started making his way across the room while searching for his beautiful blonde date.

Harry had just reached half way across the room without much success of finding Luna Lovegood when a meaty hand grabbed his shoulders with an iron grip.

Before he could even open his mouth to make a noise of protest, for the third time that evening he was dragged in the direction of a group of wizards talking amongst themselves with tall glasses of firewhiskey in their hand. Murphy 's Law decided to kick in the precise moment that Harry and his yet to be identified captor came to a stop in front the boisterous group.

"Oomph!"

A passing by fifth year boy had managed to elbow the boy-who-lived quite painfully in his sides, in his rush to get to his friends who were getting ready to leave. The last Potter's breath exploded in a ragged gasp and Harry was forced to take in a huge gulp of air to keep himself form chocking.

An action which he had immediately regretted doing so.

'Bloody buggering shite.'

He cursed mentally while gritting his teeth hard enough to make his jaws throb in pain.

The sweet smelling scent that had been tantalizing him ever since he had stepped into the room suddenly became strong enough to suffocate him.

That had the anger and fury which he had managed to dampen in the previous minutes return with a vengeance, even as every single muscle in his body stiffened and locked itself like he had been hit with a full body bind curse.

"Harry, I'd like you to meet Eldred Worple, an old student of mine, author of Blood Brothers: My Life Amongst the Vampires — and, of course, his friend Sanguini."

He was aware that his potions professor had started making the introductions the moment they stopped in front of the group, but he couldn't hear the words that were being said. Neither from his potions professor nor by the short, stout, bespectacledman who had his hands extended in his direction, with a large smile on his flushed face.

Harry shook the offered hand automatically, his eyes never leaving the source of the sickeningly sweet scent that he had identified even before they had came to a stop in front of them.

'Why is he affecting me like this?' he mentally screamed in frustration.

With skin the color of fresh snow, hair that greatly resembled greatly of tongues of flames and eyes darker than darkest night, he was without any doubt the most beautiful creature inside the magically altered room, and even the strange purple colored bruises under its eyes did nothing but to enhance the said beauty of his.

'And the most dangerous.'

The man stood a couple of inches over six feet in height with compact muscles that were visible even through the stylish robes he wore and he gave off an impression of confidence and utmost strength.

Yet, the boy-who-lived wanted to rip out the man's throat with his bare hands, not caring that he had only ever killed in self defense before or that there would be a room full of people witness him do it.

'I have to leave this place right now!'

There was a bored look gracing the man's inhumanly beautiful face as he nodded to him for some strange reason.

Harry had to restrain himself from snarling in reply.

But when the creature in a man's guise started gliding towards a nearby group of giggling girls with a hungry gleam in his eyes, he was unable to prevent the reaction that came quite naturally to him, originating deep within his chest.

'GROWL.'

The creature came to a startled stop a few feet from the group of girls at the unexpected sound while the wizards standing nearby viewed him with the looks of confusion on their faces.

'I NEED TO LEAVE THIS PLACE RIGHT NOW!'

Harry's was quite aware that his body now resembled a leaf caught in the middle of a raging thunderstorm and he freely admitted the fact that he was moments away from actually murdering what he knew to be a deadly creature.

"Forgive me Professor Slughorn, but I am afraid that I have to take my leave now."

With that muttered apology Harry took off from the crowded room before anyone could even think about stopping him.

His feet pounded the hard granite floor of the castle relentlessly as Harry ran faster than he had ever run in his life. He was determined to get as far away as he could from the creature, whose mere presence had provoked emotions that he had never felt before, and the sickeningly sweet scent that effectively clouded his mind and removed his inhibitions.

'Am I losing my sanity?'

The few students who were unfortunate enough to encounter him quickly moved out of his way, unable to miss the look of absolute fury mingled with a healthy amount of fear written all over his face, something that they had never seen in the of boy-who-lived before.

'Why is this happening to me? Merlin! WHAT is happening to me?'

Harry's memories of the next few hours were very hazy at the best, he didn't remember getting to the seventh floor, neither did he remember summoning the door to the Room of Requirements nor the said door sealing itself shut for the rest of the world as soon as he had stepped into the highly magical room.

The first thing he noticed when he came to his senses was the fact that he was laying on the cold floor curled into the fetal position with both his arms tucked in between his legs, and tears mixed with something thinker and a great deal darker streaming down his face.

"What"

Harry's whole body was drenched in cold sweat making his naturally messy hair and robes stick to his scrawny frame. He didn't feel cold as he could physically feel the heat that he was radiating, and it was enough to survive even the coldest night of the Antarctic's without a stitch of clothing on his body.

"Is"

Random shivers wracked through his malnourished frame, shivers that had nothing to do with the coldness prevalent in the floor he was laying on or the sweat that drenched his body. Every single muscle in his body felt like they had been torn apart and sewn together with a blunt needle by a novice over and over again, very slowly.

"Happening"

Almost all of his joints felt painfully stiff, similar to the time he had experienced the Cruciatus curse at the hands of Lord Voldemort after his resurrection at the end of the Tri-Wizard Tournament in his fourth year. From the deep ache that existed in all of his bones, he was certain that each one of them were used as a beater's bat for hitting bludgers in the game of quidditch for years.

"To"

The pain in his head was the worst he had ever felt in his life and that included the time when that the Dark Lord had attempted to possess him at the Atrium of the Ministry of Magic. The pounding felt like someone had used his head as an anvil for flattening a bar of red hot iron with the help of a one hundred pound sledgehammer for a very long time.

"ME"

Harry was greatly distracted by the pounding in his head as well as the numerous other pains running throughout his body, while simultaneously trying to get a hold on his emotions which were running all over the place. Thus he realized it too late that he shouldn't have yelled out loud, not when his throat felt like it had been ripped out and scrubbed for hours with a the help of an industrial grade sandpaper.

'Fan-Bloody-tastic.'

Painfully dry coughs wracked his scrawny frame and he involuntarily drew his knees to his chest with both his arms wrapped around them tightly curling into the fetal position once again, in a desperate attempt to control them.

And that certainly didn't help with the pain that had already been coursing through his body.

'Just stop it already.' he thought desperately.

But it didn't stop.

The coughing continued on and on for what seemed to be an eternity but actually a quarter of an hour. When it finally stopped, Harry let himself fall onto his back on the hard castle floor. He was thoroughly exhausted and very much out of his breath due to continuous coughing.

Harry remained still on the cold floor, taking large gulps of breath to satiate his oxygen starved lungs while gazing up at the unadorned ceiling absently.

As the minutes continued to pass, the red hot pain throbbing through his body started receding slowly along with that cursed ache which had been pounding his head ever since he came back to his consciousness.

Not long after that his mind was clear enough to contemplate the situation he had found himself in, and he did so without pause.

Hermione was not there to help him after all.

'Better not let her hear that Potter, not if you want to keep your hearing intact.' he thought with a small twitch of his lips.

Harry would bet his entire Gringotts vault that the man with the unnatural beauty as well as the sickeningly sweet scent that had clung to him like a cloak was the primary reason for his latest predicament. He didn't even know if he was human considering the bruises under the eyes that looked strangely permanent, his beauty and the scent that no one should be able to produce naturally.

'How do I even know that the scent was naturally produced. It could be the result of some kind of spell or perfume that the man had used.'

He pushed the troubling thought out of his mind as he realized that there were questions of much greater importance that needed to be answered first for him to understand his current predicament.

Thinking hard upon the introductions that his potions professor had made almost brought the headache back, but he was able to remember one particular word that had been used during the conversation.

Vampire.

'Well that at least explains the gaggle of giggling girls.'

Harry's defense lessons had covered the subject of Vampires the previous month and Snape, as much as he loathed admitting it, had given them an excellent lecture about the race of blood drinkers including how to destroy one if they were ever attacked by said creatures.

The blood drinkers usually avoided any confrontation magical folks unless they had them outnumbered by at the very least five to one or if they had been recruited by one of those never ending Dark Lords.

Vampires were extremely flammable after all and conjuring normal fire was a year charm taught to every first year.

Hence the vampires mostly preyed upon the defenseless muggle's or in some extremely rare cases, animals, for their supply of blood.

They can be easily differentiated by their eyes as the source of their food primarily affected the color of their iris itself the irises were pure black in color the vampire had not fed for a long time and was very hungry.

The blood drained from Harry's face as the realization hit him like a bludger.

'Like the one at the party! What was Slughorn thinking, allowing a hungry vampire into a school full of children.'

The realization about that man being a vampire brought forth only more questions and Harry was ready to tear his hair out, he would certainly have done so if his arms didn't feel like they had been transfigured into lead.

The most important of those being why among a room full of witches and wizards he alone had reacted so adversely to the presence of the vampire, when most of them hadn't even realized that there was a vampire among them.

'It is more likely that they just ignored his presence, bloody bigots.'

Harry James Potter certainly was not one of them and he definitely did not feel or act like he was superior to the other sentient races that existed in the magical world, being friends with a half-giant, a house-elf and a werewolf were enough to prove that.

Yet he hated the vampire with a burning passion long before he had even laid eyes upon said creature due to the overwhelming scent of the immortal being and that truly frightened him to his very being.

He had never experienced such a hate, such a raw fury. Not even for Voldemort, Bellatrix or Wormtail who were directly responsible for the deaths of his family.

And the best explanation that Harry could come up with for all the anger was that he was programmed at the genetic level to hate the whole race of vampires.

'And that's simply ridiculous, isn't it?'

He let out a loud, heartfelt groan of defeat.

After the way that the fate had played with his life from the time before he had even born, he wouldn't bet a single Knut on the thought.

Harry just prayed to whatever god listening to him up there that there wouldn't be another prophecy that would force him to annihilate the entire race of vampires, he didn't need that kind of legacy to his name. And the prospect of being the chosen one destined to bring about the death of the worst Dark Lord in over a century was enough prophecy for his lifetime.

"Enough for several lifetimes." he mumbled to the empty room.

Harry absently noted that his voice didn't sound like it had been coming from a badly scratched record anymore nor was there any pain in his throat due to the said action. Frowning slightly, he rolled onto his back cautiously before sitting up, discovering that there was no trace of the pain that had his indisposed not five minutes earlier. He ran his hand over his hair in confusion and a little bit of anger.

'Another thing that makes me more of a freak.' he thought in resignation.

He dragged himself to the nearby wall and leaned himself on it to ponder on this development as certain oddities from his childhood with the Dursley's popped into his mind, oddities that made his growing up with the relatives that hated them a little more comfortable.

One, Harry didn't get sick with cold or fever or any other disease that he had seen Dudley get or a number of his classmates in the primary school.

Two, the wounds that he picked up from his never ending lists of chores or the game of 'Harry Hunting' played by his cousin and his little group friends, usually healed after a good night's sleep or a few days of rest if the injury was particularly severe, like the one time he had broken the bones in his right hand after Dudley had tripped him down the stairs in No.4.

It may be the only thing that the Dursley's had tolerated about his abnormality because of the amount of money it saved them from not having to visit a doctor to fix him up in addition to masking the abuse he had endured at their hands.

'That didn't stop them from throwing a tantrum when the school nurse insisted on getting me glasses for my eyes, greedy bastards.'

When Harry had discovered his wizarding heritage from Hagrid, he had thought that accelerated healing was something of an ability possessed by every witches and wizards. He was only partially correct. Madam Pomfery had been very surprised and a little excited when he had questioned her about it, but she still answered him all the same.

According to the experienced healer, witches and wizards magic helped them by preventing most of the non-magical maladies but it didn't help much against those of magical nature. Injuries on the other hand could be healed almost instantaneously with the help of potions and/or the healing charms, one's inherent magic only prevented any infection from affecting the said injury itself.

'One more thing to prevent Harry Potter from ever being normal.' he thought sarcastically.

Harry had wisely kept the information about his accelerated healing to himself as he had no wish to become the new object of study for the school healer, no matter how much he liked her.

And now his body had recovered from one of the most painful experience he had ever experienced in his life within a matter of minutes, without any external help. It had taken almost three days for him to recover from the cruciatus curse cast by Voldemort even with the help of Madam Pomfery.

"Where in the name of Merlin am I anyway?" he whispered to the empty room, wrenching himself away from the painful memories of Cedric's death, the subsequent resurrection of his arch nemesis at the grave yard and the boiling anger that they provoked in him.

He took a good look around the room he had found himself in, a room that he had no memory of getting himself into. The room looked more like a small cell than anything else with an absolute lack of any furniture, windows or doors, making him wonder just how he had managed to enter it.

Rising to his feet, Harry linked the fingers of both his hands together and extended them high above his head while stretching his body, electing a series of pops from most of his joints. He then started to look around for any signs of a concealed doorway so that he can make his way out of the room and to his dorms.

Before he could even take a couple of steps towards the nearest wall, a thick oaken door magically appeared on it.

It wasn't hard to figure out the exact location of just where he was in the large castle after that, there weren't a lot of highly magical rooms in Hogwarts after all.

Not knowing the amount time that had passed ever since he had left the party, he looked down at the battered mechanical watch on his wrist and almost gasped out loud upon realizing that the time was well past two in the morning.

"I solemnly swear that I'm up to no good."

He muttered activating the Marauder's map with his wand and taking a moment to pull on his invisibility cloak, Harry yanked open the heavy door and rushed through the corridors of the magical castle in the hopes of making it to his dorms before someone reported him as missing to the staff members of Hogwarts.

However he was forced to change his destination when he reached the third floor and his stomach let out the loud growl of hunger. Scowling slightly, Harry started walking towards the portrait guarding the huge kitchens of Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry, in order to fill his starving stomach.

'I hope the house-elves are awake.'

For the first time that night the fate smiled upon him as there were a few elves still buzzing around the kitchens, including the only paid house-elf in the history of the wizarding world. Said elf's tennis ball green eyes bulged at the sight of the chosen one and he rushed towards Harry with a look of worry on his face.

"Master Harry Potter sir, you is having blood on yous!" Dobby screamed in his high pitched voice as soon as he had came to a stop in front of the taller wizard.

Harry looked down at the strangely dressed house-elf with confusion dominating the features of his face.

"I have blood on myself?" he asked in surprise after making sense of the elf's statement and looked down at the robes covering his body. Dobby was correct in his observation, the upper halves of his bottle green robe were stained with large patches of black and there was dried blood on the palm of his right hand.

Though there weren't any visible wound or even scars to indicate the origin of the blood, he was pretty sure that the blood covering him was his own. He suspected his new found ability in healing for the absence of any wound from which the blood must have spilled from and the dizziness that he should be feeling due the amount of blood he appeared to have lost.

"It's alright Dobby, I am fine now."

He reassured his friend as he fetched his wand from the pocket of his robes to clean himself.

With the intent of removing the dried blood from his skin and robes firm in his surprisingly clear mind, Harry raised his wand to perform the cleaning charm when he felt a tingling sensation was over his body.

The blood had vanished from his clothes, hand and unknown to him, most of his face by the charm he had just performed without the necessary wand movements or the incantation.

Harry James Potter had just performed a spell non-verbally, a branch of magic that had been giving him trouble ever since the beginning of his new year at school. Too tired and too hungry to be surprised anymore, Harry just pocketed the wand and looked at his shorter friend who was staring at him with wide eyes.

"Can I get something to eat Dobby, I am starving."

Dobby, seeing that his savior was indeed telling the truth about his well being, nodded his head in excitement and ushered the chosen one to one of the smaller tables littered around the room while three other elves zoomed in with large platters of food for him.

With a muttered thanks to the four elves, he dug into the meal unable to resist his hunger that had increased at delicious aroma much to their delight. Their smiles only grew larger when he asked for two more servings to satisfy his starving stomach.

"These are simply delicious guys." he had exclaimed while eating his sixth slice of shepherd's pie.

Harry would have been astonished if he knew that he had consumed thrice the amount of food that his best friend Ron Weasley would eat in a single sitting. But he didn't know that, so he just sat back in the cozy little chair, enjoying a mug of hot chocolate that Dobby had brought to him soon after he had finished his dessert which consisted of a plate of mouth watering treacle tart.

"Where are the other elves Dobby?" he asked the small elf sitting on a chair facing him while swinging his legs like a child on a sugar high. Dobby had looked ecstatic when he had suggested the elf to join him at the table while the other house-elves who heard him had looked scandalized.

"They is cleaning the castle Master Harry Potter sir, we is doing it every night sir." Dobby chirped, his ears quivering in excitement. Harry hummed slightly sipping his drink when another thought popped into his mind.

"Is Kreacher behaving himself?"

A small scowl graced the free elf's face.

"Kreacher says nasty things about Master Harry Potter, Dobby hits him if Dobby hears them." his friend said proudly making Harry smile softly.

"Thanks Dobby." Harry muttered as he drained the last of his drink, feeling extremely tried after events of the very long night. "I should get going now if I want to catch the train tomorrow. Good night Dobby and thank your friends for the great meal."

Dobby jumped to his feet along with him and smiled toothily.

"Dobby is very happy to help Master Harry Potter sir anyway he can. Good night Master Harry Potter sir."

With one last smile at his very small friend, Harry pulled his father's cloak over himself and walked out of the kitchen almost yearning for his four posters.


	2. Chapter 2

** I AM WOLF**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or Twilight.**

** Aftermath – Part 1**

Dreams.

Experts define them as a successions of images, ideas, emotions and sensations that occur during certain stages of sleep. They propose that an average person has five to seven such dreams per night, each of those ranging from seconds to as long as twenty minutes in time. Said experts also claim that on an uninterrupted eight hours of sleep, a person spends over two hours dreaming.

According to these experts, dreams are just the manifestations of a person's deepest desires and anxieties, often relating to their repressed childhood memories and obsessions.

They were right of course, as long as they were referring to their modern world where logic, reason and science defined the day to day life of its every inhabitants.

Because dreams have much deeper meaning and purpose in the other world. A world where everything that's considered impossible in the world of science happened with the normality of one breathing.

A world where something other than science reigned supreme, something that granted every being born into the said world with the ability to rewrite the reality to their will. A world that remained hidden from the former world for over four centuries.

The world of magic.

Most of the theories of the aforementioned experts did apply to the those in magical world but not as exclusively due to the inclusion of an aspect that's considered nothing more than fantasy in the normal world.

In addition to the dreams being manifestations of desires and anxieties, they can also be messages from the astral plane or even fellow magical beings capable of doing so. There had been plenty of cases where the dreams had been a vision of the dreamers future or at least one of the possible futures.

The dreams are even used in the obscure field of divination where a master of the art can divine the future based on the images glimpsed from the said dreams.

Hence the dreams are taken more seriously in the world of magic than the normal one, more so for this particular person.

The said person knew very well that he was dreaming in his sleep and quite vividly at that, but that didn't phase him in the least. What did befuddle him was the fact that his current dream didn't induce in him the emotions like anger, anxiousness or even fear, which had been almost constant in his dreams ever since that cursed night almost two years ago.

Dreams that he hated with a passion, for what they reminded and represented to him.

Some of these dreams were influenced by factors other than his own mind and the memories it housed, namely the emotions, thoughts and mind of his mortal enemy due to the mental link that they shared.

He called these kinds of dreams as 'the visions'.

Based on his very own experience with these visions for the span of over two years, he had classified them into two categories namely, True and False.

True visions are the actual events that he was able to witness through the eyes of his mortal enemy. In addition viewing them, he actually felt the monster's emotions like they were his own, something that made him physically ill on several of these instances.

These kinds of vision were usually triggered due to some kind of intense emotions experienced by the said enemy, be it anger, hate or happiness.

During most of the instances of these true vision, his enemy quite ignorant of the fact that there was someone else present in the twisted mind of his.

And no matter how hard it was for him to witness these despicable acts, he didn't totally resent the ability as they had the potential to save innocent lives and had done so more than once.

He knew what he was experiencing now wasn't one of this visions because the feeling of cruelty and menace, upon which his foe's mind seemed to be constructed upon, were totally and completely absent.

False visions, as the name suggest, were the memories of the events that were created and sent to him by his mortal enemy for the express purpose of making his dreams a total nightmare or to lure him into a trap, which happened only once giving him mental scars that would last his lifetime.

Every single vision of this kind had served their purpose perfectly, at least until the mishap at the end of his last school year. An event that had put an end to any types of vision from his mortal enemy though he still felt the occasional flash of emotions or a glimpse of some vague images.

And it was very apparent that his dream was not one of these as it was just too peaceful for it to be something created for the express purpose of tormenting him.

There was also the lack of imaginary scene where one or more of his friends were being tortured by his arch nemesis and his minions, like the very last vision of this kind which resulted in an ambush which took the life of someone he loved very much.

Above all, he didn't think that monster was actually stupid enough to even think of using the same trick twice. Even his mentor had commented about his enemy being the most brilliant student to ever attend his school.

Thus he was pretty sure that whatever he was dreaming had nothing to do with his mortal enemy. Besides, his mentor had said that the monster was employing Occlumency to keep him out of its mind and he certainly believed the old man.

Even though he was well aware of these facts, they didn't have much of an impact due to the nature of the said dream and the emotions prevalent in it.

What he was dreaming filled him with a sense of excitement, happiness and wonder while at the same time making him feel very much alive. Something he had experienced only a handful of times before in his whole life.

No, it had nothing to with partially clothed girls or him happening upon some vast treasure that would make him insanely rich or something similar, which usually dominated the dreams of almost every normal teenager.

He would have snorted if he was capable of the feat.

Because the notion of him being normal was a completely ridiculous one. He was pretty certain that the word 'normal' cannot be used in the same sentence as his name though right now, totally immersed in his dreams as he was, he couldn't really remember what that was.

But that didn't bother him in the least. As under the current circumstances, his name wasn't of any importance to him, only the dream was.

And it was quite the strange one too, as far as dreaming goes.

He was standing tall and proud with his shoulders broad, resembling the statues that people of old erected for their hero's. Beneath his feet which remained as bare as the rest of his body, were the mixture of dried leaves, small stones and rich brown soil that usually dominated the grounds of most of the forests in the world.

Though he was absolutely certain that this was the most beautiful of among them all.

The trees of his forest consisted primarily of mammoth sized pines, which were tall enough to give the impression of bridging the gap between the land of the mother earth and the skies. Fresh green moss covered their trunks along with some parts of the forest floor, giving the whole place an almost alien beauty.

The gentle breeze of the afternoon caressed every inch of his naked frame while filling his lungs with pure forest air, refreshing his mind greatly. It also filled his senses with the exotic scents of the raw nature that existed all around him.

He couldn't prevent the contented smile that twisted his lips, the only expression on his otherwise granite like features.

A small part of him still detached from his dream noticed that a single glance of this place was enough to fill his entire being with a feeling of euphoria, the likes of which he had felt only when he was in the air on his priced broom.

But it was the sense of belonging which accompanied the place that left him feeling stumped, as it was something he had never felt before in his life. Not even at Hogwarts or the Burrow, the two places in the world that he considered closest to being his home.

And to tell the truth he had never expected to find a place where he could belong in the span of his life, no matter what his friends said. He was glad for once that he was wrong and there existed such a place.

It didn't matter that he had discovered its existence in the land of his dreams, because every ounce of his instincts screamed to him that there existed such a place in the real world and he would find it if he searched hard enough.

He had always trusted his instinct as it had yet to fail him.

Thus he now firmly believed that there existed a place where he could truly belong, a place where he could be just himself and not some legend that the people of his world thought him to be. He was certain that it was a place where he would be truly at peace, a place where he could build his home and live out the entirety of his life without any regrets.

The yearning that he felt to find this place and make it his home was almost overwhelming. But he knew that it wasn't the right time to attempt it, he had to fulfill the destiny that had been thrust upon him ever since his birth.

A destiny that he could not and would not forsake, no matter how much he wished he could. Not when hundreds of thousands innocent lives depended on its outcome.

But it did give him the hope of a future, which in turn did an excellent job of strengthening his determination to fulfill the said destiny and remain in the land of living in the process, to an extraordinary degree.

He just hoped that his friends would understand his reasons to leave them to find this place that seemed to be calling him on a primal level.

Like most of the good things that happened to him in his life, the emotions of contentment and peace which had dominated his dream didn't last long.

The enchanting smell of nature that had been filling his senses were immediately discarded by his mind when his superhuman sense of smell picked up a very familiar scent in the gentle breeze that was blowing from deeper within the forest.

A scent that smelt sweet enough to suffocate him.

There was only a hint of it in the breeze, being mingled with the countless other scents that existed in his forest, but his mind latched on to it with a natural ease whilst ignoring everything else.

After all, none of the other scents indicated the presence of a being who threatened the peace of this beautiful land.

Red clouded his vision as fury great enough to pulverize entire mountains coursed through his veins, as he understood the purpose of its presence in his forest.

The creature had dared enter his domain, endangering his pack in the process. It will pay for its insolence with its wretched life, a life stolen from the very veins of countless other people, innocent and defenseless people.

Oh, he will make sure that it will pay for it's crimes.

With that in his mind, he shifted into his alternate form in the time span of the tenth of a second, much faster than anyone could even blink their eyes.

Two pairs of legs, backed by inhuman muscles containing supernatural strength transformed each of his stride into a gigantic leap over twenty feet in length, while the fleshy pads of his giant paws helped making every one of them absolutely soundless.

Combined with his speed that averaged over one hundred miles per hour, he was nothing more than a gigantic blur flashing through the woods, gracefully avoiding any and all the obstacles in his path.

Five inch deep gouges made by his plus sized paws in the rich brown soil of the forest floor were the only signs that betrayed his presence in his beloved forest.

His destination continued to became shorter with the passage of every second of time. The giant strides and his supernatural speed effectively melted the distance that separated him from his prey, whose scent acted as the North Star for his fast paced journey.

A scent that had continued getting stronger ever since the beginning of his journey and even in his half feral state, the fact confused him greatly.

Know your enemy better than you know yourself, it was one of the most important rules when it came to battle and he was proud of the fact that he knew the abilities of his foe as much as he knew of himself.

Hence he knew with an absolute certainty that his enemy's sense of smell was as good as his own, which meant that the said creature should have picked up his scent at the same time he did.

It should have already made a run for its life taking its stinking scent along with it, as the fight if it came to it, would be one on one. A fight in which anyone of them had equal chances of winning, something his prey detested.

These creatures never risked a fight, not with an opponent with strength and speed equal to its own. Not unless they had the overwhelming odds of winning such a fight.

But that was not happening here.

An ambush was a likely explanation but he could smell the scent of only a single creature of its kind which meant the presence of only one such creature, none of his senses had ever led him astray in a hunt or a fight in his life.

There must be an explanation for its unusual behavior, the small human part of his mostly primal mind reasoned as he continued his run towards his prey.

As the answer hit him suddenly out of nowhere, it provoked a howl of absolute fury from his inhuman vocal cords. The rage which accompanied the revelation helped him by fueling his speed significantly so that he could reach the creature sooner.

When he finally reached the point from where his sharp eyes could discern the form of his prey clearly, his suspicions regarding the creature's rather strange behavior were confirmed.

The scene caused the rage and fury already coursing through his veins increase tenfold and he surrendered himself completely to the primal part of his mind.

A part that was ruled entirely by anger, rage, cunning and instincts of an apex predator that was born to hunt and bring down these wretched creatures.

Only a single though existed in the purely primal mind of his, to exterminate the creature who had dared to commit such an atrocity in his domain.

With his entire being focused on the deathly pale form of his enemy, he stepped into the clearing that separated him from his prey, a snarl on his muzzle that revealed his gleaming canines, his ears flattened to the back of his head and the hairs on the back of his neck standing straight at the prospect of the approaching fight.

He issued a growl to get the attention of the creature who had yet to notice the approach of soon to be executioner, too lost in the activity he was engaged in.

The creature looked up at him attracted by the menacing sound, with the dark red blood of its victim dripping down its pink lips and pointed chin.

Eyes the color of the blood it had just split widened in surprise and a healthy amount of fear, at the sight of its mortal enemy looming like the reincarnation of the death itself.

The creature got to its feet slowly with a grace of a professional dancer while dropping the corpse of the unfortunate woman it had been holding in its ice cold arms as he fed from her, to the forest floor.

Another growl rumbled across the woods, originating deep within his chest at the sight of the woman's empty, lifeless eyes which were gazing unseeingly at the clear blue afternoon sky and her mangled throat, from where the creature had sucked her life along with her blood.

The undead creature took an unconscious step backwards, apparently sensing the almost tangible rage radiating from the body of his enemy who stood over seven feet above the forest floor.

It seemed to realize the truth that its existence will be brought to a premature end within mere moments and there wasn't much it could do to prevent it from happening, but that didn't stop it from trying anyway.

The bipedal creature was much swifter on its two feet than he was on his four and its smaller size granted it with comparatively greater speed than his current form. The creature in the guise of a human seemed to be very much aware of that particular information, as its reaction a few seconds after it had laid eyes on his form proved.

The creature spun on its feet and started to run as soon as it broke out of its shock which took only a couple of seconds, using the thirty feet that already separated the two of them as an advantage to escape from the certain death.

Due to the unnatural speed in its body that resembled an athletic human male in his early twenties, it would have been totally invisible to the eyes of almost all mortal beings.

Hence it was quite fortunate that he was anything but a mortal, fortunate for him that is.

It may have been faster than him, but he was certainly smarter as he knew his limitations better than his strengths.

He had started bunching his muscles in preparation to jump his prey as soon as he had stopped in front of the clearing and when the creature tried to make its escape, he pounced with all his might.

A leap that was fueled by most of the muscles present in his supernatural body and it carried him completely across the thirty feet that separated the pair and put him directly on the back of his not so immortal prey.

The fight, if it could be even termed as such, ended before it had truly began with the creature lying in several pieces at his feet on the forest floor.

He gazed at his defeated foe for only a moment longer without any emotions before throwing back his huge head and started howling in grief and anger.

The grief which he felt for the loss of an innocent life at the hands of the foul and loathsome creature, and the anger due to his own inability to save the said life.

His howls echoed through the woods for a long time creating a haunting melody which seemed to fill the surroundings with the sadness that he felt.

He shifted back into his human form with a thought and started walking towards the fallen form of the beautiful woman, his head bowed and shoulders slack at his failure.

She was a beautiful woman in her mid twenties with copper colored skin, deep brown eyes and silky black hair that was drenched with her own blood.

Kneeling besides her, he gently closed the unseeing eyes with a long finger and then proceeded to clean her face of any blood never taking his eyes off her, silently vowing that this would never happen again as long as he breathed.

"Please forgive me." he mumbled, straightening the dress she wore before transferring her broken form to his powerful arms and got to his feet.

Standing tall with his shoulders straight, he looked at the pile of limbs that his enemy had been reduced to and frowned slightly with his eyes narrowed in concentration.

A second later, the remains of the creature burst into bright orange flames and he watched on, with the cold body of the woman the creature had killed in his arms, as the pieces were reduced to ashes by the magical flames and the ashes getting cleared away by the wind blowing through the forest.

Darkness started to envelope his vision as he walked backed with the cooling corpse of the innocent woman in his hands, until he couldn't even see her face.

And Harry James Potter snapped his eyes open.

His naked chest, sticky with his own sweat, heaved repeatedly as he took deep breaths to calm the erratic beating of his heart.

The dream he had just experienced was something he had never experienced before, as it was exciting, nerve racking and saddening at the same time.

It was also rapidly disappearing from his mind with the passing of every second until all he could remember from it were the images of large paws, snarling muzzle and blood dripping fangs.

But the emotions he had experienced still remained behind, confusing his already sleep addled mind greatly.

When the last vestiges of sleep had finally left his eyes, he realized that he was sitting on the soft mattress of his bed surrounded by total darkness provided by the drawn curtains of his king sized four posters.

Pulling the curtains aside, his hand automatically reached for his glasses that he had placed on the bed side table that morning before falling asleep, and put it on his face.

The first thing he noticed as his vision cleared was that the only light that illuminated his dorm came from the dimly lit candles in the chandelier that hung from the ceiling and the rhythmic snores that filled the room.

He looked at the battered mechanical watch on his wrist and frowned in confusion as it showed the time to be half past six in the morning, that couldn't possibly be right. It couldn't be right for the reason he felt totally rejuvenated and wide awake, even though he didn't get to sleep until almost three that morning.

The frown morphed into a fierce scowl as the reason for his late night popped into his mind, unleashing the torrents of memories of the events of the previous evening, making him forget about the latest mystery.

Those memories combined with the dream of which he remembered nothing, aroused within him a feeling of helplessness which in turn gave way to anger that pulsed angrily throughout his body.

'Bloody hell, not this again'

He knew that he had to calm himself down before he could do something embarrassing, like setting his bed on fire due to accidental magic born from his rather chaotic emotions.

And he knew the perfect way to calm them down, from a large amount of past experiences, though his emotions had never felt this messed up.

With the destination firm in his mind, Harry jumped out of his bed and quickly threw on the first pair of robes he could find before taking off in a run from the sixth year dorms.

The common room was devoid of the presence of any human apart from himself, something he was very grateful for as it made his journey progress without any interruption and he rushed towards the portrait hole in almost a run.

He navigated through the corridors of the large castle with an ease that he had gained by living for more than five long years in the said castle. It took him over ten minutes to reach his destination, even with the use of half a dozen shortcuts.

Throwing open the doors to the changing room allotted for the Gryffindor quidditch team, he made his way towards the lockers and placed his palm on the magically reinforced metal door. It snapped open immediately, the charm on the door recognizing his magic.

His Firebolt gleamed in the light from the tip of his wand, looking no different than it did when he had first laid his eyes on it almost three years ago. A broom that his godfather had got him for the Christmas in his third year though he didn't knew it at the time.

Picking up the fastest broom to be ever made in his world, he closed the locker shut with the flick of his wand and sprinted out of the changing room in the direction of the huge quidditch pitch. Once he was out of the castle, he leaped still in his run and mounted the Firebolt, eager to get up in the air.

He didn't notice that the process was lot easier than normal.

The anger, confusion, frustration and helplessness that had been plaguing him ever since he woke up few minutes ago, vanished almost immediately and without any trace. They were replaced by the feelings of excitement, euphoria, freedom and happiness, which he always felt when he was up in the air.

Harry lost himself in a world made up of barrel rolls, dives, hairpin turns, seemingly impossible twists, and pure speed of over three hundred miles per hour that only a Firebolt was capable of. He was so in tune with his broom, as he squeezed every bit of performance it was capable of, that it felt like a natural extension of his being.

He felt very much alive flying there in that freezing December weather, never noticing that his body remained warm. The harsh wind stung his skin unprotected by clothing and whipped through his messy hair due to his extreme speed.

His mind felt remarkably clear of any thoughts of any kind, as blood and adrenaline pounded through his blood vessels due to the activity he was engaged in.

The absolute freedom of being in the air had never failed to help him forget the rather large number of problems that were prevalent in his life, at least for the duration of the flight. One of the reasons he loved to fly whenever he got the opportunity to do so.

He flew, with what many would consider reckless abandon, for over an hour before he came to a hover over sixty feet above the grounds of his school.

The boy-who-lived couldn't help but admire the the enchanting scene that was his school during winter.

Every inch of the large grounds were painted white by the many layers of fallen snow, and the black lake frozen due to the extreme cold. Hogwarts castle, with a few lightened windows, stood majestically on one side of the grounds while the Forbidden forest with its snow capped trees loomed on the other with all its savage beauty.

'I should do this more often.' he thought idly, breathing in the fresh but cold December air.

The calmness he had achieved thanks to his long flight helped him analyze his latest predicament without loosing his temper.

It was very obvious that his encounter with the vampire was the primary reason for everything that went wrong since the previous evening. And from the lack of similar reaction from others present at the potions master's party, he concluded that only he was affected in such a way.

Since the vampire didn't seemed to be bothered much by his presence, he deducted that the said creature didn't have any urges to see him dead.

'Thank Merlin for that, I don't think I would've controlled myself if that vampire even looked at me threateningly.'

He was also pretty damn sure that his reaction was not caused by some kind of curse that was cast upon him without his knowledge. It was due to his ability to break the imperius curse, the darkest and strongest of all mind control spells.

Harry was very much aware of the fact that the encounter had affected him emotionally, mentally and physically, though he didn't know the true extent of any of them.

In the short time that had passed since his encounter with the vampire, it was his emotions that was most adversely affected, as it was very apparent how unstable they had become.

Mentally, the effects were many but they weren't detrimental unlike those with his emotions. His mind felt so much lighter and sharper, as if a heavy, invisible blanket that had been wrapped around it for his whole life had been lifted, making him perceive everything much more clearly than he had ever before.

He had a suspicion that his new found aptitude with the non-verbal casting was due to the new found clarity of his mind. After all Snape did say that particular branch of magic depends directly on the strength of the casters mind.

Apart from the extreme amount of pain he experienced after he woke up in the Room of Requirements, the impact the encounter had on his body was anything but hurtful.

The most apparent of those was the increase in his body heat by a large degree ever since his encounter, though the said difference didn't make him feel the least bit uncomfortable. He actually felt at ease with the change, like it had always been like that.

Also after the events in the RoR, it was clear that Harry's naturally higher rate of healing had clearly increased but he uncertain to what extent and he was somewhat grateful for it, as it would certainly help him achieve his destiny.

There was also a slight increase in his stamina which he discovered due to his sprint from the Gryffindor common room to the changing room. He was a little out of breath after the long run, not gasping out loud while holding the stitches in his sides.

The hour long flight had also felt much easier than before.

Thinking about the after effects with a calm and clear mind, it didn't upset him as much as it had just over an hour ago. After all the adverse effects could be a lot worse than unstable emotions.

'I could learn to live it, especially if my clearer mind helps in my Occlumency.'

He at least hoped so, as the alternative would mean that he would become a moody bastard like his previous year. Only this time it wouldn't have anything to do with Lord Voldemort.

Starring at the surprisingly clear sky of the December morning, he suddenly remembered that he hadn't practiced his mental exercise before going to bed. He directed his broom towards the Astronomy tower, intent on doing them now as it was still fairly early in the morning.

Besides he did not want his volatile temper unleashed upon some poor soul for making some silly mistakes.

The second tallest tower in the magical castle was empty of any human presence, just as he predicted and he landed lightly on the floor imbibed with warming charms. He then sat himself down on one of the many benches available with his Firebolt by his side before leaning back, closing his eyes.

Once his body had completely relaxed, he concentrated on his breathing, which was deep and regular, to get his mind to relax. This was the first step in clearing one's mind, or that's what his book said and seeing the logic behind it, Harry agreed with it.

Even if had yet to find any success in the said process.

_Breath in, breath out. Breathe in, breath out. Breath in, breath out._

The words became the only thought in his mind as his entire world narrowed onto the deep, slow breathing of his, inhaled through his mouth and let out through his nostrils.

_Breath in, breath out. Breathe in, breath out. Breath in, breath out._

With each cycle of breathing, the boy-who-lived slowly but steadily lost all awareness of himself and the world that surrounded him, his only anchor on the world being the words he unconsciously repeated in his mind.

_Breath in, breath out. Breathe in, breath out. Breath in, breath-_

The words became hazier and hazier with the passage of time until he stopped repeating it mentally but he was in no state to notice it, as the small part of his mind that was still conscious was totally captivated by the appearance of white light.

It was very small, just the size of a cricket ball, but against the total darkness that currently made up the entirety of his world, it stood out like a second sun. He couldn't keep himself from unconsciously reaching for it with his mental hands.

He had enough time to notice that the ball of light being surprisingly warm, before he started falling into a long dark pit of absolute darkness. Curiously, he didn't feel panic or fear at the prospect.

He felt oddly at peace, instinctively knowing that the fall, no matter how long it lasted, wouldn't hurt him in the least. So he waited patiently for it to end, almost eager to find what waited for him at its end.

When it finally did stop, he was forced to shut his eyes due to the overwhelming brightness that greeted him. It took him some time to blink the spots out of his eyes before he attempted to open them, and it took him a few more tries to succeed.

The disappointment that he felt when he was finally able to discern his surroundings, if it could even be termed as such.

He was standing in the middle of a very small, very white room that reminded him of a prison cell but without any doors or windows. No matter how hard he searched, he couldn't find anything or anyone in the confined space that existed within his mind.

The thought that his book made no mention of any physical representation of his mind didn't help his mounting confusion in the least.

Releasing a frustrated sigh, he ran a hand through his hair before leaning back against the wall behind him to contemplate the situation further.

At least that's what he intended to do.

For as soon as his body made contact with the pure white wall, he jerked forwards startled, in both the realm of his mind and the physical world, where he crashed his head quite hard against the desk in front of him.

Needless to say his concentration was broken and Harry snapped his eyes open, which were tearing slightly due to the throbbing in his head.

"Bloody Hell!" he cursed, more out of shock as he felt the pain and dizziness drain away at a shocking rate. Shaking his head, he pushed the issue out of his mind in lieu of the reason for the said accident.

He was pretty sure that he would never forget what he felt pulsing on the pure white wall in his mind, the moment seemed to ingrained in his mind.

Even thinking about the unadulterated power that radiated from the wall made the hairs on the back of his neck stand upon their ends, while sending shivers of excitement and fear through his spine.

There were other feelings like anger, confusion, excitement, fear, happiness, love, pride, sadness but they were all pushed back by the feeling of sheer power that seemed to be residing within him.

He would have loved to journey back to that place in his mind but his instincts screamed at him that he was not ready for whatever was outside those four walls and he agreed with it, however reluctantly.

Noticing the increase in the brightness of the sunlight, he glanced at his watch to find the time to be ten minutes past eight. With one last sigh, he mounted his broom slowly guided it towards the Gryffindor tower and to the large window of his dorm.

Harry used his wand to unlock and open the said window before drifting inside gently, in case any of his dorm mates were still in the room. Fortunately they weren't or at least that's what he thought as he moved to stow the Firebolt into his trunk.

"Mate, did you go flying on a December morning wearing only your dress robes?" asked the voice of his best mate in an incredulous tone.

'Bugger'

Cursing mentally, he turned to find Ron standing outside the door that led to the bathroom with his hair still wet from the shower and wearing a clean set of clothes.

"I needed to clear my mind Ron."

Harry stated while getting his cleaning supplies along with a change of clothes from his trunk. He could hear the red head sputter in shock.

"But why didn't you wear something warmer?" was Ron's question.

He just shrugged his shoulders before answering the question.

"Warming charms mate."

The tip of Ron's ear turned red in embarrassment for not having thought of that.

"Sorry Harry. Well, I better get going now." the youngest Weasley boy said before moving towards the dorm's door, making his friend frown in confusion.

"You are not waiting for me to go to the breakfast Ron?" he asked, slightly puzzled.

Said teen rubbed the back of his neck in nervousness.

"I'm sorry Harry but Lav wants me to spend the day with her as we will not be seeing each other for over three weeks."

Harry had difficulty controlling the anger that had spiked at his friends words.

"I take it you won't be joining us for the train ride to London."

They both know it wasn't a question.

"No I won't." the redhead still replied. "I'm really sorry mate, besides you know that me and Hermione would only spend the entire journey bickering."

Harry didn't look away from his friend's face as he stood up with his arms laden with supplies for his daily morning rituals.

"You are right Ron. I will see you later then." he said opening the doors of the bathroom.

"See you later mate."

The last words of Ronald Weasley were muffled by him banging the door shut.


	3. Chapter 3

** I AM WOLF**

**DISCLAIMER: I do not own Harry Potter or the Twilight.**

..

Inside the bathroom attached to the sixth year boys' dorms of the Gryffindor tower, a raven haired teenager banged the back his head rather hard against the hard teakwood door that separated the said room from the dorms.

..

He was supporting himself against the said door with his back resting firmly upon it and his arms laden with clothes and cleaning supplies as he continued introducing the back of his head to the magically reinforced door quite violently, trusting the silencing charm he had erected a minute ago to keep the sounds from escaping the bathroom.

Someone might get the wrong ideas if they happened across the sound that resulted from his current action.

..

The teen didn't stop banging his head until the dull throbbing that had born after the first few blows, had transformed into a pounding ache which made his eyes water in pain.

"Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow." he muttered rubbing the back of his head.

The action may be seen as quite an idiotic one by any sane human being, but this sixteen year old human male respectfully disagreed with them.

'It isn't idiotic in the least bit, not for me anyway. And I am quite sane, thank you very much.'

He thought that because for him, the rather bizarre action served a very good purpose.

And that was to push back the red hot anger he had been feeling to the far reaches of his mind with the help of the distraction provided by the pain resulting from all that banging.

It worked rather well.

'Too well, to tell the truth.'

He was pretty sure it had worked because he no longer wanted to hex his best mate back to the Founder's era, which would have the effect of ruining their friendship.

That would be a very bad thing.

Especially in these dark days, where people were killed, mutilated, raped and tortured. Everything because of the wishes of a power hungry madman along with a group of bigots and racists who followed him very willingly.

Friends and family should stand united if he was to be stopped.

The teen knew that better than most people in his world, but it was very hard to control his new found temper which seemed to be always on a hair line trigger, a trigger that his best mate had unknowingly tripped mere minutes ago.

It was a wonder that he didn't get hexed right then and there.

'Stupid best mates and their stupid girlfriends'

Harry Potter certainly cannot blame Ronald Weasley for wanting to spend time with Lavender, his very first girlfriend. Even if 'spending time' meant snogging each other senseless.

'It's a perfectly natural thing for new couples, so suck it up Potter'

He ignored the fact that he didn't spend every second of his free time last year snogging Cho Chang after they had started dating, they were both too traumatized to play the role of the perfectly happy couple.

'Thank Merlin that it hadn't developed into something, I don't want anyone endanger themselves because I have romantic feelings for them.'

He though rather relieved by the fact.

It's just that he had never spent a train ride without the company of his best mate and it was hard to even imagine such a situation.

'You still have Hermione and your other friends to keep you company Potter, now start getting ready for the day.'

Harry absolutely refused to even think what would become of him when Hermione too started dating someone in the near future, he already had enough worries which would probably last for a long time after his graduation from Hogwarts.

After using the loo, he stepped into one of the empty showering stalls and locked its doors behind him.

Placing the change of clothes on the shelves with cleaning towels that was protected from any stray spray of water by an imprevious charm, he stripped down until he was naked as a new born baby. He then deposited the dirty clothing into the small basket near the shelves and watched it disappear to wherever the house-elves did the laundry in the magical castle.

After spending over fifteen long minutes under the scalding hot spray emerging from the brass showerhead, Harry toweled himself dry using one of the fluffy red towels in the shelves and started getting dressed for the day in the clothes that had once belonged to his cousin Dudley Dursley.

"Thank Merlin that I'm too small for Dudley's boxers." Harry mumbled while pulling on a pair of plain cotton boxer that his aunt had bought for him in a sale, turning a bit green a second later due to the image his traitorous mind had conjured up.

'Ugh, Dudder's in his underpants. Good thing my stomach is already empty otherwise I would've just hurled.'

Securing the baggy black jeans around his thin waist with the help of a worn leather belt, Harry picked up his cleaning supplies and walked out of the bathroom.

After making his daily attempt at taming his wild hair, Harry lifted his trunk onto his bed with some difficulty and started picking through its contents for a clean pair of socks.

'That's it. I am going to clean this thing as soon as I find my damn socks.'

He swore after throwing away yet another ball of crumpled parchment.

It took him five more minutes of shifting through the contents of the trunk to find the object of his search, at which he sat on his bed that was already made by some housel-elves, to pull the pair on to his feet followed by his school shoes.

Harry then proceeded to dump the entire contents of his trunk on the mattress of his four posters, so that he could begin his first self assigned task of the day.

'What's that?'

The dim sunlight which was streaming through the open windows, was reflected by something lying on the top of the messy pile that was the content s of his trunk and being naturally curious, he unconsciously reached for the mysterious object.

Said object turned out to be a mirror. A rather old, square shaped mirror with a wooden frame that was covered with runes that was the size of a small paperback novel.

He looked into its silvery face and saw his face reflected on it, just like the last time.

'This is a two-way mirror, I've got the other. If you need to speak to me, just say my name into it; you'll appear in my mirror and I'll be able to talk in yours. James and I used to use them when we were in separate detentions.'

The words he had read from Sirius's note months ago came unbidden to his mind as he held his godfather's last ever gift to himself in his numb fingers, a small weight settling in his heart.

He had completely forgotten about existence of the said mirror after he had failed to contact Sirius using it a few days after the fiasco at the Ministry of Magic, when he still refused to believe that the said man was dead.

'How was I supposed to know it was a gate way to the realm of death?'

For several days after his godfather's death, he had woken up in cold sweat with the images of Sirius getting hit by the curse and falling through the granite archway with its fluttering veil flashing through his mind.

For several days after Sirius Black's death, he had wondered what would've happened if he had used the communication mirror to contact his godfather instead of using the floo in Umbridge's office.

Would he be alive and well, waiting impatiently for Harry to arrive at the Black family home for his Christmas holidays.

Would he be still a prisoner in the said home, brooding to himself when he was all alone when all other members of the Order were out on the field doing their best to bring down Voldemort.

Would he still be trading insults with Snape whenever the greasy haired man visited the Grimmauld place, while doing his best not to hex the man.

Would he be helping his godson prepare to face the destiny that had been thrust upon him ever since his birth while making sure that he had some fun at the same time.

Harry would never know.

It had taken him weeks of brooding and over a dozen letters from his friends to be convinced of the truth that he was not responsible for Sirius's death, Bellatrix and Voldemort was.

It took him a while but he realized the truth in the words that often graced his friend's letters and he accepted them, his godfather would want him to live his life happily.

The nightmares became a rare event after that realization.

And now, as he held the mirror that had once belonged to the man who had escaped the Azkaban for saving his godson from a traitorous rat, he felt only a twinge of sadness along with the slight heaviness in his heart.

He also felt the small smile playing on his lips as the memories of the happy times the two had spent together replayed in his mind.

Harry realized that he had finally accepted the death of one Sirius Black's, accepted that he was now in a far better place, teasing and getting cursed for it by his beautiful mother along with his father.

With the smile still on his face, he pocketed the mirror and proceeded to separate the rubbish from the large pile laying on the mattress his four posters.

It took him a little over twenty minutes to complete the said task by which he had two smaller piles on his bed.

One composed of all his articles of clothing, products from WWW he had got the last summer, unopened packets of sweets, his broom, school texts, quidditch magazines and a pouch with over fifty galleons.

The other pile were all of the rubbish that had been collecting in his trunk for over six years like used parchments, broken quills, damaged scales, chocolate wrappers, empty ink bottles and the whole set of Gilderoy Lockhart's books which were the defense texts for his second year.

With a sigh of relief, he grabbed his wand from the pocket of his jeans and waved it over the later.

"Evenasco." he muttered and the pile of rubbish disappeared from his bed without leaving a trace, he did not miss the fact that the spell he had just performed was a lot easier than it used to be.

Harry was about to stow his wand back in his jeans when an idea popped into his head. Narrowing his eyes in concentration, he waved his wand over the remaining pile while uttering the incantation he had heard his friend Tonks use, in a firm voice.

"Pack." the word echoed throughout the empty room.

To his surprise and delight, the books started depositing themselves in the bottom of the trunk followed the Firebolt, then his clothes after folding itself, WWW products, packages of sweets and finally the pouch of galleons.

Just like he had wanted.

Smiling triumphantly, he closed the lid of the trunk shut, locked it and moved it to the foot of his bed before lying back on the bed with his eyes closed.

The resulting darkness combined with the soft, warm mattress of his bed brought forth the few images which reminded from his dream to which he had woken up that morning.

'Am I never going to get a break.'

Sighing softly, he examined them in his mind repeatedly in the hopes of triggering something that would help him remember the dream that had vanished soon after he had woken form his sleep. Somehow he believed that the dream would provide all the answers for the strange things that happened to him, ever since he had met the vampire in the party.

No such luck, it was like all the memories of the dream were totally erased from his mind by an over powered obliviate and he had no hopes of recovering it.

'Guess I have to get my answers the hard way then.'

From the images, he reckoned that there were a vampire and some sort of canine in the dream.

'Maybe a werewolf.'

He had heard that those two races do not get along well, a reason why the vampires never joined Voldemort as he already had the werewolves in his ranks. Or at least that's what Remus had said to him in one of their chats during his last year.

Harry realized he needed help to solve this riddle and there's a person he knew who was very adept at solving riddles.

He needed to find Hermione Granger.

Jumping out of the bed, he pocketed his wand and his father's invisibility cloak but the Marauder's map was nowhere to be found.

With a scowl he guessed that his best mate must have borrowed it for his meeting with his girlfriend.

Bringing his temper under his control, he walked out of his dorms.

'I will deal with the red headed prat later.'

The common room was filled with the noisy chatter of the students sitting in small groups on the furniture that were littered around the warmly lit room. Most of them looked quite relaxed with pleasant smiles on their faces, as they conversed with their friends whom they wouldn't be seeing for a long time.

He would have loved to join one of these groups consisting of his year mates and talk about random things, pushing the thoughts of the war that was raging in the magical world out of his mind in the process, if he didn't have one very big mystery to solve.

And Hermione Granger would be spending all of her Christmas holidays with her parents this year and Harry needed her help to find at least something in regards to this latest mystery, if he wanted a measure of peace during his three weeks stay at the Burrow.

But the bushy haired female was nowhere to be seen in the Gryffindor common room, nor was his other best mate who had almost gotten jinxed by him not an hour ago.

'Damn you Ron, I really need the map.'

Harry had a nasty suspicion that the said red head was too busy sucking his girlfriends face somewhere in the castle using his map to remain undiscovered.

He shook his head to clear those thoughts and concentrated on guessing the possible locations where his other best friend would most likely be.

'Library, great hall or her dorms, hmmm decisions, decisions. Best ask someone else before going on a blind search through the huge castle.'

Those thoughts ran around in his mind as he continued looking around the common room, just in the case he had missed Hermione the first time around or for someone else whom he could question about her whereabouts.

Apparently he hadn't missed Hermione but he did find someone who would have a very good idea about the location of the bushy haired female.

Harry moved towards the far end of the room where he had spotted the petite form of Ginny Weasley lounging in a couch surrounded by her friends, as they talked amongst themselves quite animatedly.

He nodded absently to those who had greeted him with friendly smiles as he walked through the large room.

The red head noticed his approach with the help of one of her friends and all traces of laughter left her face to be replaced by a fierce scowl, something that both confused and scared him a lot. He had become good friends with the only Weasley girl from the month he had spent at her home during the summer holidays before the start his sixth year and it made him wonder just what he had done to visibly upset her.

He knew he had to do something before she could start hexing him, he had witnessed her hexing abilities in the DA last year and had no wish to be on the receiving end of them.

"Hello Ginny, how are you this fine morning?"

Harry tried with an innocent look on his face which wasn't that hard to fake, since he had absolutely no idea what he had done to earn such a reaction from her.

When her eyes narrowed in silent warning, the innocent look vanished from his face and one of nervousness took it place.

Things weren't looking good for the chosen one right now.

Ginny stood from her chair, the scowl never leaving her face and brought her hands to her hips in an excellent imitation of her own mother. The boy-who-lived gulped in fear, he was in some serious trouble if she was doing the 'Molly Weasley' impression unconsciously.

'Merlin help me survive this encounter.'

"Why did you do it Potter?" she asked in a harsh whisper.

He had absolutely no idea what 'it' might be.

'Think Potter, before she decides to bat boogey you.'

"Do what?" he answered her with his own question when he failed to find the reason for her anger in his mind.

That was a very bad move on his part, he realized almost instantly.

Ginny Weasley's face turned an alarming shade of red darker than her hair making her, in his own humble opinion, a very comical sight. But he kept the scared look on his face, he didn't want to enrage her. Especially when the girl before him looked remarkably like an avenging angel.

'I'm a Gryffindor for Merlin's sake, not an idiot.'

Still some of his feelings must have shown upon his face as the fiery red head almost exploded in anger.

"DO YOU FIND THE SITUATION SOMEHOW FUNNY HARRY JAMES POTTER?" she yelled furiously.

'Damn, she has also inherited her mother's shouting skills.'

The occupants of the common room were all looking at the pair with emotions ranging from amusement at his predicament, to fear and awe at the sight of the angry girl brave enough to yell at the chosen one in public.

His temper was rather legendary, particularly after his fights with the Umbridge the previous year.

"I-I'm n-not f-finding t-the situation f-funny, G-Gin." he stuttered out his reply while taking an unconscious step backwards.

Some of her anger appeared to be drain away from her features at his words.

"That's good Harry as you are already at the risk of experiencing my hexing abilities in person for what you had done to that poor girl. How could you, you prat?"

Ginny had managed to tone down her voice so that she was no longer heard by the entire Gryffindor tower.

"Girl, who are you talking abou- Oh Merlin, Luna."

Harry trailed off as the color drained completely from his face, images of Luna in her beautiful dress filling his mind.

The Gryffindor team chaser nodded her head sharply, proving that he was spot on in his realization.

"Five points to the Gryffindor." She said sarcastically, "Why in the name of holy Merlin did you ditch her Potter."

Harry was too shocked to answer her question.

He had totally forgotten about the beautiful blonde who had accompanied him to Professor Slughorn's party the previous evening, forgotten that he had left her all alone in that crowded room in his rush to get away from the vampire. And she had no knowledge of him doing so.

'You have messed up big time Potter.'

How long had she searched for him in that magically expanded room. How long did it take her to realize that he had left the party without even informing her, essentially ditching her in the process. How long did she stand frozen in shock after she had made that discovery?

It doesn't matter that he had a legitimate reason for doing what he did, he should have at least remembered about leaving his date back at the party after he had regained consciousness in the Room of Requirements. He should have found Luna immediately and apologized to her, assuring her that it was never his intent to leave her.

But he was too absorbed in his own trouble to think about anyone else.

'Merlin I hope she is alright.'

"Stop gaping like a fish and answer my question Harry?" Ginny as again, now tapping her foot impatiently.

He closed his mouth shut with an audible snap and shook his head to clear his mind of the jumbled thoughts of guilt.

"I didn't ditch her Ginny, well not intentionally anyway." he stated tiredly and motioned for her to follow him.

He led her to the pair of armchairs in the darkened corner of the common room where the couples usually went for some light snogging after curfew.

'Hope she doesn't get any wrong ideas and hex me because of them.'

With a flick of his wand he cast the muffilato that he had learnt from his potions text, a book that once belonged to someone called the Halfblood Prince.

Harry faced the girl looking at him with anger still on her face but now with some curiosity mixed with it and started speaking.

"Luna's my friend Ginny and you know very well that I don't hurt my friends like that, not intentionally in any case."

Ginny pinned him with an intense look for almost a minute before leaning back in her chair with a small sigh.

"Then why did you leave her back at the party, without even informing her that you were doing so? On her first date none the less."

'First date, can this situation become any worse?'

The feeling of shame filled him at her little tidbit and Harry was unable to meet the red head's eyes.

"We went to the party just as friends." he mumbled still looking at his shoes, not really knowing what he was saying.

"That doesn't matter Harry, now tell me the reason for ditching her before I am forced to use the bat boogey hex on you for hurting my friend."

She warned him, twirling her wand between her fingers.

Harry let out a tired sigh and looked at her in the eyes.

"Something happened at the party last night Gin, something that has never happened to me before in my entire life before. I had to get out of that room before I did something that I would have regretted right now."

There was another uncomfortable silence as she once again pinned him with an intense look, searching his face for any signs of deceit.

"Are you going to tell me what this 'Something' is?" she asked after confirming that he wasn't lying to her.

Harry shook his head.

"I'm sorry Ginny but I can't. There are a lot of things that I have yet to understand about the situation myself and even if I did, I'm afraid that the information might endanger you."

That wasn't entirely true but he didn't want his friend looking at him like a freak like his relatives usually did, he couldn't bear it.

His answer seemed to upset her a little but she didn't pry any further, something he was extremely grateful for.

"I am really sorry Ginny." he apologized again.

The attractive red head just shook her at his words.

"It's not me that you should be trying to convince Harry."

"I know." Harry said, running a hand through his hair in nervousness. "But I don't think Luna would want to talk to me anymore, not after what I did to her last night."

Ginny giggled for the first time since the beginning of their conversation.

"This is Luna we are talking about Harry, she's not the kind of girl to hold a grudge or be even mad at you for taking off without her. Just go talk to her and I promise that you would be very surprised with what she have to say." Ginny said mysteriously before getting up and walking away to the company of her friends.

Trying to understand the red head's parting words served only to confuse and intrigue him greatly.

'Girls'

Harry thought rather resignedly as he waved his wand, removing the spell he had cast to prevent anyone from overhearing their conversation. He didn't want to provide any more fodder to the legendary rumor mill of Hogwarts than he already had.

Standing up from the chair, he stretched his back and started walking in the direction of the portrait hole.

His stomach had been grumbling silently during his entire conversation with the petite redhead and he had two ladies to find before the carriages left for the Hogesmedge station.

"Going to the great hall Harry?"

The deep male voice stopped him in front of the portrait hole, a voice he recognized easily.

"Yes I am Neville." He answered, turning to look at his friend who had accompanied him to the MOM at the end of his fifth year at Hogwarts.

Neville was no longer the pudgy little boy he had first met on the train ride for his first year to the magical school in Scotland.

Hours and hours of hard labor at the greenhouses in the school and his home had groomed him into a tall young man with a trim, muscular body. The confidence that he had gained through his superb spell work that was topped only by Harry himself and Hermione, in the numerous sessions of the DA last year did an excellent job of curbing his shyness. Shyness he had acquired from growing up with a rather strict grandmother who compared every one of his action with that of his father.

These changes had transformed the boy who had once been too scared to even stand up for himself into an ideal Gryffindor.

Brave, loyal and noble beyond belief.

He was someone who Harry would trust with the task of watching his back during a fight.

"Do you mind if I join you, I lost track of the time working in the greenhouse four." Neville said rather sheepishly.

Harry chuckled softly, apparently some of the shyness still remained behind.

"Of course I don't mind Nev. Let's get moving before the breakfast gets vanished by the elves, I'm starving."

The two friends walked out of the portrait hole and down the third floor corridor towards the stair way that would lead them to their destination.

"So, how did the party go last night Harry?" asked the teen by his asked after a few seconds of silence.

Harry had to use a lot of his determination to keep his features neutral, he doesn't know after all.

"It was interesting and a bit enlightening." he answered persistently starring at the path in front of them.

"I heard that there was a vampire at the party?"

He now had to look at the floor to hide the scowl that broke out on his face.

"Yes there was Neville but I didn't interact with him much. Have you packed your trunk for the train?" he asked before his friend to ask any more questions of his own regarding the vampire.

'Honestly, what's so interesting about a blood sucker anyway?'

Neville rubbed the back of his head nervously.

"Not yet Harry, I was planning on doing it after getting some breakfast." he answered as they continued to walk.

A comfortable silence fell between the two friends.

"What are your plans for the Christmas holidays Harry?" the taller boy asked after some time.

"Nothing too exciting Nev, I'm just going to spend them with the Weasleys. What about you?"

There was a flash of sadness that crossed the other teens face at his question.

"The usual Harry, holidays at the manor with gran and the family, a visit to St.M-Mungo's on the Christmas morning."

Harry didn't comment on the stutter when he talked about the premier hospital of the wizarding world, a place where his parents had lived in for most of the teen's life. They were tortured to insanity with the use of the cruciatus curse by a group of Voldemort's Death Eaters, led by a pathetic excuse for a human named Bellatrix Lestrange nee Black.

The shimmering anger reared its ugly head again and coursed through his veins at the thought of the loathsome woman who had ruined the lives of great many innocent people including his own godfather, Sirius Black.

'She will pay for her crimes, I will make sure of it.'

"Are you alright Harry?"

The question brought him back from his morbid thoughts of revenge and justice, and Harry become conscious of the fact that he had been clenching his jaws so hard that they started hurting a bit. Neville had probably noticed it too.

"I'm alright Neville, just some bad memories."

He answered after relaxing his jaws and forcing a small smile on his face.

"Oh, sorry mate." he teen mumbled.

"It's quite alright Nev. What were you working in the greenhouses so early in the morning?"

The brown haired teen appeared relived for the change in topic and started enthusiastically describing the amazing plants that he had been working on with great many details that was mostly lost upon the boy-who-lived.

Neville was the genius when it came to Herbology, not himself.

"Professor Sprout said we are getting a batch of Moon Reds during the next term, they are mainly used in the healing potions. Their cost had increased quite a bit due to the war and she thinks it would be best to grow our own batch." Neville said seriously.

Harry could understand that, the war that Voldemort was waging on both the magical and muggle worlds was having an adverse effect on almost everything. He was about to make a comment about it when something strange happened, again.

A group of five girls just walked past the two Gryffindors from the direction of the great hall, talking amongst themselves in an almost inaudible whisper.

The crest and trim on their robes helped identify them as the members of the Slytherin house and definitely purebloods from its quality. And they didn't even look in the direction of the two boys as their paths crossed, Harry wasn't surprised by the lack of interest in the least.

Slytherins and Gryffindors do not get along, period.

What did surprise him was the whiff of the strangely exotic scent that he had caught when the group had passed by him, a scent that sent a jolt of excitement coursing through his nerves.

He immediately looked over his shoulders to identify the source of the scent but the girls had already disappeared around a corner, taking the scent with them.

The scent and the sensation it provoked had lasted only a fraction of a second making Harry wonder if he had maybe imagined them somehow or was it some sort of strange echo from the events of the previous evening.

'That must be it.'

He ignored the fact that the two scents were completely different, as were the emotions they provoked. There were enough mysteries on his plate already and he didn't want to add this when he wasn't even sure whether it was real or not.

'I just hope it doesn't come back to bite me in my arse.'

Harry thought pushing the event to the far reaches of his mind and started listening to the words his friend was saying.

'Thank Merlin he's too into the explanation about his plants to notice my slip.'

"And some first years had the brilliant idea of using the Dragon dung as the fertilizer for the Devil's snares and those nasty buggers grew to occupy the entire greenhouse one. We have to use ten cauldrons of Withering Draught to get rid of them."

The teen was saying, not noticing the slight pause in Harry's steps when the group of girls walked past them or his face becoming slightly paler.

"That's just terrible Nev." he commented absently as they both entered the great hall, illuminated by the sunlight streaming from its invisible ceiling.

There weren't many students in the large hall due it being the day of the beginning of the Christmas holiday.

"It looks like the Headmaster has left the school again." Neville observed, his eyes fixed on the Head table.

Harry looked at the said table and noted that his friend was indeed right in his observation, the Headmaster's golden chair was empty.

"There is a war going on Nev and the damn Ministry needs all the help it can get, especially Dumbledore's."

He stated as his eyes roved over the four long house tables, trying to locate the two girls whom he needed to speak with as soon as possible.

Lady luck seemed to be smiling upon him as he spotted one of the girls of his search sitting in the sparsely populated Ravenclaw table.

"Why don't we join Luna in the Ravenclaw table Neville?" Harry asked after getting his friend's attention.

Said teen didn't even blink his eyes in surprise at his suggestion and just motioned for him to lead the way, which Harry did.

"Mind if we join you Luna?"

Harry questioned as soon as they had both came to a stop in front of the silver eyed girl.

"Not at all Harry, Neville. Sit before the Galloping Pinoshers jump on to you."

Luna answered without looking up from her copy of The Quillber, the magazine owned by her father.

Used to her antics by now, the two boys sat down opposite to the blonde and started filling their plates with toast, sausages, bacon and eggs. Or rather Neville did that while Harry continued looking at the girl with a nervous look on his own face.

"Luna?"

He called her name to get her attention, at last gathering the courage that the Gryffindors were famed for.

"Yes Harry." she said closing her magazine and looking at him with her slightly dreamy eyes.

"I wanted to apologize to you." Harry stated now looking guilty.

"Apologize for what Harry?" the fifth year asked with a puzzled look on her face, twirling a lock of her in her fingers.

Harry got the impression that she was having great fun at his expense.

"For leaving the party without you or your knowledge, I essentially ditched you Luna. But believe me when I say that I didn't do it consciously or with the intent to hurt you."

For a second the dreamy look disappeared from her eyes, making him feel like she was gazing into his very soul which made him shiver involuntarily.

"Relax Harry, I know that you didn't do it on purpose to hurt me. I know very well that you are not the kind of person to hurt anyone deliberately, let alone your friends. You are just too sweet for that Harry." Luna reassured him while smiling softly, silver eyes sparkling.

Harry blushed to a shade of Weasley red at both her confidence in him and the complement she had given him.

"You are not mad at me?"

He asked in surprise, once he had gotten his blush under his control.

"You thought I would be mad at you Harry, did Wrackspruts get to you too?"

Luna inquired looking genuinely worried.

"I'm not sure about the Wrackspruts Luna, but I thought you would be pretty mad at me. Especially after seeing how mad at me Ginny was and she's not even the one I left at the party for Merlin's sake."

Harry blabbered on in relief.

She actually giggled at him, he had never seen her do it.

"Ginny just wanted to make sure that you didn't do it deliberately and to prank you a little in the process."

His lips twitched involuntarily at that, he can believe the prank bit without even a sliver of doubt having seen some of the pranks she had pulled against her brothers in revenge.

"Still it was your first date Luna, and I ruined it completely."

The blonde shook her head of blond hair in amusement.

"Do you want me to be mad at you Harry?" she asked, her dreamy smile back on her face.

"No, not really." he mumbled.

"Then forget about the incident Harry. Besides we went only as friends."

He smiled at his friend and started filling his plate with food.

"Not that I would be opposed to the idea of us being more than friends," she continued after few seconds of silence, making Harry choke on his pumpkin juice "But I'm afraid that the Destinates have already selected someone else for that role."

Neville, who had been eating his food while doing his best not to listen into their conversation, thumped Harry on his back to stop him from choking to death while chuckling slightly at his friend being teased by the fifth year Ravenclaw.

"M-More t-than friends, I-I er…" Harry spluttered at her statement but the girl had already gone back to her magazine.

He continued gazing at her with a look of shock until his stomach rumbled loudly reminding him that it was still empty and starving for food.

'I am never going to understand this girl, not in this lifetime.'

With that last thought he dug into his plate of food. The next twenty minutes passed in silence with the two boys concentrating on filling their stomachs, while Luna continued to read her book upside down.

"Bloody hell mate, you ate more food than Ron had ever done in a single sitting." Neville exclaimed as Harry finally finished his breakfast, wiping his plate clean in the process.

Harry looked startled for a moment before shrugging his shoulders, he had been really hungry and he hadn't noticed the amount of food he had consumed.

"I was starving Nev. So, what are you going to do now?" he asked filing away the information about his apparently increased appetite.

"Going to pack my things for the ride home Harry, how about you?"

Harry thought for a moment, he had forgotten to question Ginny regarding Hermione's location due to her being mad at him.

"I'm going to the library to find Hermione." the teen answered before getting to his feet. "Care to join me Luna?"

"Sure Harry, I need to withdraw some books from history and runes to help me locate the Crumpled Horned Snorkacks during the Christmas holidays."

Once Luna had joined him, the pair started making their way to the Library in fourth floor which was incidentally the largest one in the British Isles.

"Say Luna, you are familiar with the creatures of the magical world right?" he asked after walking for few minutes in a comfortable silence.

Luna graced him with a dreamy smile that had some genuine excitement mixed with it, the same excitement that graced his features when he was talking about defense or quidditch.

"Yes I am Harry, the magical creatures have always fascinated me. Take the Wrackspruts for example, they infest the mind of almost every magical beings but no one notices it."

He interrupted her before she could begin a rant worthy of one Hermione Jane Granger.

"That's really interesting Luna but what do you know about vampires, specifically their natural enemies."

The blonde pouted at him for his interruption but answered his question all the same.

"Hmmm, enemies of the vampires?" she asked as they continued on their journey towards the Library.

"Natural enemies." he reminded her.

"Natural enemies, like born to hate each other?"

"Yes Luna, exactly like that."

Luna continued to hum some tune, totally ignoring the strange looks she earned from the students passing by the pair.

"I can think of only one Harry, Wolves." she said as they reached the fourth floor and started making their way to the giant doors of the Library.

"Wolves, you mean the Werewolves Luna?" he queried, looking at her for clarification.

"Magical Wolves Harry, every breed of them." the Ravenclaw clarified.

"I thought the werewolves were the only kind of magical wolves?"

Harry was really beginning to hate his lack of knowledge when it comes to the magical world.

"Of course there are, Harry. Aren't there different breeds of wolves in the non-magical world?"

He smiled sheepishly and shrugged his shoulders as they approached the double doors of the Hogwarts Library.

"You are right Luna, it's just that I never heard of any kind of wolves besides werewolves, not even from Hagrid."

She smiled her dreamy smile again.

"They are very rare creatures Harry and they tend to avoid the humans, both magical and the muggles." was her explanation.

Harry smiled up at her and the two stepped into the very large room.

"Well Harry, I will go get my books as you look for Hermione in the library." Luna said as she walked towards the runes section of the giant library.

Harry watched her until she disappeared behind one of the gigantic shelves littered around the room before moving starting his search for his bushy haired friend.

Ten minutes had passed and he had looked through the sections dedicated to Transfiguration, Charms, Arithmancy, Potions, Defense, Runes and even History but his best friend was nowhere to be seen.

'Guess she's not here.'

He was about to move towards Madam Pince's desk to inquire the librarian whether Hermione had visited the library that day when a book on one of the shelves caught his attention.

It was a medium sized volume with thick black leather bindings and the title written in gold letters.

'A Complete History of the Vampires'

Harry stared at the title for almost a minute analyzing the idea that had popped into his mind before pulling it out and moving towards the magical creatures section to get some more books, in hopes of finding some answers about the situation he had gotten himself into.

He had just removed his third title on the topic of magical wolves when a female voice got his attention by called out his name.

"Harry?"

The chosen one turned around, his arms laden with four heavy, thick books that were all bound in leathers either brown or black in color.

"Hello Padma." he greeted while smiling politely.

Parvati's twin and Harry had gotten better acquainted from the DA sessions that he had thought, he found her to be nothing like her twin who was more interested in fashion and gossip.

She actually reminded him of a quieter version of his best friend Hermione, maybe that was the reason that the two got along splendidly.

"What are you doing in the library without Hermione?" his year mate asked, hugging the book in her hand to her torso.

"Just some independent research on magical creatures, Pad." the boy-who-lived replied, returning to examining the books on the shelves. "Wait, how do you know that Hermione is not with me?"

The ebony haired girl looked at him in puzzlement, Harry Potter was not a studious individual.

"She left for your house common room about a minute ago, after checking out over a dozen books from here." Padma informed him.

"That's weird, I combed this place in search of her without any success and you are saying that she left only a minute ago." he asked in confusion as he removed yet another book.

Padma looked at him with a small, sly smile.

"Did you look in the non-magical section?"

He shook his head in his reply.

"No, but I thought she had quit muggle studies back in our third year itself."

"She was helping me Harry as I had some trouble understanding the power sources in the muggle world."

Padma explained while browsing the books on the shelf in front of her.

"Well that makes sense." he said removing another book from the shelves, this one about the creatures that were extinct for quite some time.

"Thank you Padma, I need to go talk to her about my research. Enjoy your holidays."

"You too Harry." she said smiling slightly before walking away.

Harry took another book and started walking towards the runes section where he had last seen Luna Lovegood, who had her nose buried in the pages of a huge tome on Ancient Egyptian runes.

"Are you done here Luna?" he asked, finding her in the exact same location but with a different book in her hand.

"Not yet Harry." she answered turning a page.

"Well, Padma informed me that Hermione left for our common room a few minutes ago."

"You don't have to wait for me Harry." Luna said looking at him with a smile.

"Are you sure?" he asked a bit reluctantly.

"I am sure Harry, now go before the wrackspruts infest her."

The teen offered his friend one last smile and made his way towards the entrance of the library where he would find the strict librarian.

"I like to check these out Madam Pince." he said placing the half dozen books on the table in front of her.

The gaunt woman fixed him with a penetrating stare before waving her wand over the books, magically recording all the necessary details in her register.

"Make sure you do return these on the start of the new term Potter." she said in a slightly raspy voice.

"I will Madam Pince."

With that promise, Harry retrieved the six volumes and walked out of the library, earning some bewildered looks from those who happened upon him on his way to his common room.

"Hungarian Horntail." he muttered pausing before the portrait of the Fat Lady that guarded the entrance to the Gryffindor tower.

The common room was almost empty, most of the Gryffindors being busy packing their trunks for the train that was scheduled to leave in an hour or have a late meal in the great hall.

Hermione, his best female friend was one of the few remaining behind in the warmly lit room and she was busy in the pages of what looked like some paperback novel.

'Hope she doesn't blow up at me for not informing her sooner.'

"Good morning Mione."

Harry greeted placing the books that he had been carrying on the coffee table in front of the couch she was lounging on before seating himself next to her.

"Good morning Harry, have you packed you belongings for the Hogwarts Express?" she asked looking at him absently before doing a classic double take, her wide brown eyes coming to rest on the pile of leather bound books.

He watched on in amusement as Hermione continued to look between him and the books he had brought from the library, her eyes getting wider until he was sure they would pop out of her head.

"Harry, did you withdraw these books from the library?" the brunette questioned him in astonishment.

"Yes."

"Are you sure Harry?"

"I'm pretty sure Mione."

The girl now looked at him in concern.

"You didn't hit your head somewhere did you?" she asked.

'She is being plain ridiculous now.'

"Hermione, snap out of it. Is it so unbelievable that I withdrew some books from the library for some reading?"

She had the gall to snort at his question.

"Oh come on Harry, how many times have you done so in the past without me nagging to do it?"

Now that was a very good question and Harry thought on it long and hard to get some answers.

"How about the time in our first year, the one named 'Quidditch through Ages'?" he asked after some time.

"You borrowed that from me Harry." was her immediate response.

Harry ran a hand through his messy raven hair making it further messier.

"What about the times during the Tri-Wizard Tournament and the DA?" he tried.

"You did those at my insistence Harry."

He let out a sigh, knowing that he was not going to win this argument.

"Ok, you are right as always Mione. I have never taken books from the library before for purely educational purpose, can we move on to the more important things now."

She had a smug grin as she nodded her head before asking the most obvious question.

"So, why did you get these books as they are not obviously for your pleasure reading?"

He looked pointedly at those still in the common room and sighed softly.

"We will talk about it in the train Hermione, too many ears in here." Harry spoke in a whisper, his eyes conveying the serious nature of the said conversation.

The smug grin melted from the brunette's face and it was replaced by fear and concern almost instantaneously.

"It isn't about V-Voldemort is it? You didn't get another vision again did you Harry, you have to inform Professor Dumbledore if you have. " she said looking scared.

Harry couldn't blame her, she was almost killed the last time he had a vision from his arch enemy.

"No, I didn't have another vision Mione. Besides I don't think the Headmaster is in the castle." he said to her while looking at her face with a reassuring smile on his features.

The scared look vanished from her face at his smile which she could tell was genuine in its nature and she offered him one of her own.

They both spent the next few minutes in a comfortable silence, starring at the fire crackling merrily in the large fireplace.

"I better get these into my trunk Mione, the train leaves in half an hour after all." Harry stated looking at his wrist watch.

Hermione jumped to her feet along with him and watched as he scooped up his book from the small table.

"Oh. I better go recheck my trunk Harry, see you soon."

With one last smile, the two friends left for their dorms to get ready for their journey home or the Burrow in the case of one Harry James Potter.

**A.N: Thanks for the reviews people.**


	4. Chapter 4

** I AM WOLF**

**DISCLAIMER: I do not own Harry Potter or the Twilight.**

** The Train Ride**

"Harry, will you hold it for a moment mate, Harry, HARRY!"

The loud scream finally got the attention of the most famous teenager in the history of the wizarding world. The said teen was distracted by the troubling thoughts concerning his upcoming conversation with the brightest witch of their year.

A look over his shoulders helped Harry identify the owner of the rather loud voice to be one Mr. Ronald Weasley.

'What does he want now?'

He thought in confusion as he as he came to a stop in the middle of the grand staircase that led to the entrance hall of the Hogwarts castle. The slightly battered trunk filled to the brim with his belongings floated at his sides, thanks to the hovering charm he had cast back in his dorms.

"What can I do for you Ron?" he asked rather formally, once the tall redhead came to a stop in front of him with a look of nervousness on his freckled face.

Harry didn't miss the figure of Ron's girlfriend standing at the top of the stairs with two trunks resting at her feet.

"I just wanted to return this to you Harry."

Ron said as he offered a piece of worn looking parchment. An item that was one of Harry's most prized possession in the whole world, due to the fact that it was created by his late father with the help of his friends when they were at school.

"Thank you."

The raven haired teenager muttered, pocketing the Marauder's map. He started turning around, intent upon resuming his journey to the carriages that would be waiting for the students in front of the magical castle.

"Mate?" the nervous voice of his best mate stopped him before he could even take a step.

Harry looked at him with a small frown on his face and waited impatiently for the teen to say something.

"Are you still mad at me, you know, for wanting to spend the train ride with Lav?"

He had the urge to scowl at the question but managed to control it, he had almost forgotten that little before the redhead decided to throw it in his face.

"No, I am not mad at you Ron. I get it, she is your girlfriend and you are entitled to spend your time with her."

Harry said while offering a forced smile.

"Really mate?" the redhead asked hopefully.

He nodded his head in reply and his friend looked visibly relieved.

"Enjoy your train ride Ron, I will see you in London." Harry said to his beaming friend and started making his way down the stone steps, his trunk following him like a loyal puppy.

Harry felt only a small amount of guilt at the prospect of deceiving his best friend.

He wasn't mad at his best friend, not in the least.

But he was worried, very worried about the conversation that he would be having with Hermione in a short while. The boy-who-lived was rather anxious about what her reaction would be, after learning about the alarming and unexplainable events that had happened at the potion master's party.

'Hope she doesn't freak out much.'

If he was honest with himself, he was actually glad that Ron would not be joining them for the ride home. Harry was absolutely certain of the fact that Ron would not be as understanding about his latest predicament as Hermione, especially not when he wanted to kill someone in cold blood.

The fact that 'someone' was a vampire wouldn't matter to the redhead, nor would be the fact that he had managed to control himself in the end.

Not to mention his unusual ability to heal quickly that he had hid from Ron for all these years.

No, it would be better to inform his best mate after he had all the answers himself, he decided.

Hermione would understand.

'She has to.'

While he remained in the world of his disconcerting thoughts, his legs had unconsciously carried him to the entrance hall, through the massive double doors that guarded the said hall and down the steps which led to the double doors, where his friends had said that they would be waiting for him.

"There you are Harry, what took you so long?" the somewhat bossy voice of the girl he had been just thinking about brought him back from his thoughts.

Hermione along with Neville and Luna were standing next the long line of pitch black carriages, which had their headlamps and hoods on for the cold weather, with their trunks which were lying at their feet.

He can see the Thestrals standing between the carriage shafts, ready to pull the said carriages to the train station.

The mysterious creatures didn't look any different than the first time he had laid his eyes on them at the beginning of his fifth year.

A complete lack of flesh, their coats were blacker than coal and they clung to their bones making them look quite skeletal, the dragonish head, the pupil less eyes and their vast bat like wings. They still looked like the steed of death itself.

What made Harry stop and stare at them was the scent emanating from the skeletal creatures, a scent which he had never smelt from them before.

'Not even when I rode them to the Ministry.'

A scent that was remarkably similar to the one he had smelled from the previous night, though not as strong. Not as maddening.

"Something wrong Harry?" his dorm mate asked, breaking the teen's starring contest with the Thestral tied to the carriage nearest to him.

Two of his friends were gazing at him with worried looks on their faces while the other petted the said creature while humming to herself.

"I'm fine guys."

Harry boarded the carriage quickly after depositing his trunk inside under the seat, not giving the two Gryffindor's any chance to question him further on the slipup.

His three friends mirrored his action a few seconds later with Luna getting in last.

Silence regained inside the jostling carriage for over a minute before it was broken by the question from Neville.

"Where is Ron, Harry?"

Harry didn't miss the slight scowl that graced Hermione's face at the mention of the redhead boy.

"He's spending the ride home with Lavender, something about not being able to see her for weeks."

He answered before leaning back and closing his eyes with his hands crossed over his chest.

"Oh." Neville said blushing slightly.

The only sound that filled the carriage for the rest of their journey was the quiet humming of the only fifth year sitting by his side.

He didn't mind it as the sound felt oddly soothing.

When the jostling finally stopped, indicating that they had finally arrived at their destination, the four friends got off the carriage while levitating their trunks in front of them.

The small station was filled with his fellow students who were busy searching the long line of cars in the Hogwarts Express for an empty compartment, mostly with their friends.

"Come on guys, let find a compartment before there is nothing left."

Harry muttered while motioning to the nearest car.

Neville blushed again.

"I'm sorry Harry, but I promised Hannah that I will join her for the train ride."

Harry looked puzzled.

"Hannah Abbot from Hufflepuff?" he asked for clarification.

The teen nodded his head.

"I didn't know you were dating?" the amusement was apparent in his tone.

The taller boy blushed harder while mumbling his reply.

"We aren't Harry."

Even Luna looked amused.

"If you say so Nev, see you next term and have a merry Christmas. Oh and do enjoy you ride with Hannah."

Harry's words made the taller boy blush harder, making him wonder if the teen would pass out from the overflow of blood to his brain.

Neville mumbled his goodbye in a squeaky tone and almost sprinted away from towards the front of the train, to find the sixth year Hufflepuff.

Chuckling a little, he looked at his friends only to frown in puzzlement.

"Where did Luna go?" he asked Hermione, noticing the absence of the blond Ravenclaw.

The brunette looked at him, exasperation written all over her face.

"She said something about searching for some kind of creature that can be found only on the train making its way to London and took off." Hermione stated, shaking her head.

The boy-who-lived suppressed a snicker at that, the bushy haired Gryffindor was still at odds with Luna's creatures.

"Hope she finds it. Come on then." he said walking towards the car's door, ignoring the girl's indigent spluttering.

The pair soon found an empty compartment in the middle of the train and they both took their seats in it after stowing their trunks on the overhead racks.

A comfortable silence settled between the two members of the Golden trio as they waited, by an unspoken agreement, for the train to start its six hour journey to the King's Cross station in London before Harry could explain his latest misadventure.

"When's your turn to patrol the train Mione?" he finally asked a few minutes after they felt the train start moving.

Hermione withdrew her wand and waved it twice in the direction of the door, sealing the compartment and preventing any sound from leaving it.

"At one in the afternoon, so you better start talking now Harry James!" she said in a tone that broke no arguments.

Harry sighed running a hand through his hair as the girl sitting opposite to him gazed at him with her chocolate brown eyes. Eyes that were narrowed in annoyance at his reluctance discussing about whatever that was troubling him.

Reluctantly he began explaining the events of the previous evening, before the girl started hexing him.

"Well, it all started when I entered Professor Slughorn's office yesterday evening."

He explained about the strange scent, his reaction to meeting the vampire, the flight from the party, regaining consciousness in the Room of Requirements and the weird experiences in the magical room. The teen then continued to inform her about the dream in the morning which he couldn't remember and the changes he had experienced even in the short time after the incident.

He left out the little incident on his way to the great hall for breakfast and the one with the Thestral for entirely different reasons.

Hermione listened intently to his explanation which lasted almost an hour into their journey and sat back in her seat once he had stopped talking, her brows frowned in concentration as she analyzed everything he'd just said.

"You were right." she stated after ten long minutes.

"Right about what?" he asked in total bewilderment.

"When you thought that you weren't cursed. If you can throw away the imperius, no other mind controlling curses could possibly affect you."

A thought popped into his mind and he immediately voiced it to the other occupant of the compartment.

"What about the potions?"

Hermione shook her head before explaining.

"There isn't any potion that could induce what you had experienced, what you are still experiencing. It may be possible to create the symptoms by using a bunch of them, but they probably would have killed you in the process. And you would definitely have noticed taking them as they all taste worse than skelegrow. Not to mention the effects they have only lasts a short time, an hour at most."

Harry took a moment to digest the facts his friend had provided him.

"Are you sure it isn't due to Vo-Voldemort?" she asked breaking the silence "You know to get the vampires on his side."

It was a good guess on her part.

"I am sure Hermione, my scar would have alerted me if he had tried to mess with my emotions like that." he assured her.

"Hmmm, your scar you say." she mumbled softly.

Suddenly she leaned towards him and pushed aside the bangs that covered his forehead with her delicate fingers before he knew what had happened.

Harry gasped at the very un-Hermione like action and held himself still as she continued gazed at his forehead with something akin to shock and disbelief written all over her face.

"What is it Mione?" he asked in concern after she slumped back into her seat. Her eyes never left the lightning bolt scar that he had received from the actions of his arch enemy almost sixteen years ago.

"Your scar..." Hermione breathed unable to complete her sentence.

Wondering what made her normally composed best friend to act this way, Harry fetched the mirror he had placed in his pocket earlier and gazed into it while holding his bangs aside.

The boy-who-lived almost dropped the mirror in shock at the sight that greeted him.

His scar on the forehead that looked remarkably like a lightning bolt and which had remained as a rather large red welt ever since Voldemort's resurrection was missing.

'No not missing.'

Harry corrected himself, it was still there. Only now it was a thin, white zigzagged line that was almost impossible to see against the paleness of his skin.

"Bloody Hell." Harry muttered, borrowing one of Ron's favorite curse words.

"Language, Harry." his friend admonished him automatically.

He ignored the rebuke as he rubbed the scar or what left of it, to make sure it wasn't his imagination as he had dreamed about it a plenty of times.

And it wasn't.

"What happened to my scar?" he asked in a stupefied daze.

The question was a rhetorical one and Hermione probably knew that but she still answered it.

"Looks like it healed over your ordeal last night."

He looked at the girl in disbelief.

"I can see that Mione. What I love to know is how that had happened in the first place."

Silence fell over the pair again as they both searched for a likely explanation.

"Maybe it is due to the accelerated healing." Hermione proposed.

Harry shook his head in disagreement.

"I told you Hermione, I have always healed faster. Whatever happened last night only boosted the ability significantly."

She pinned him with an intense gaze and he felt slightly uncomfortable under it.

"How can you be so sure of that Harry?" the prefect asked a bit suspiciously.

'Busted Potter'

"What aren't you telling me Harry?" she questioned again as he refused to meet her eyes, worry apparent in her tone.

"My scar isn't the only thing that is missing Hermione." he stated finally.

"Harry?"

"The link Mione, I can't feel the link I had with Voldemort's mind."

Hermione's mouth dropped open at the end of his statement, her eyes comically wide in surprise and wonder. Harry could understand her shock, having felt the same when he made the discovery minutes before leaving his dorms.

"The l-link is g-gone?" she managed to get out after five full minutes of silence.

He just nodded his head in reply.

"Gone, disappeared, vanished, it's just not there."

Her eyes became glazed as she pondered the new information provided by him.

"Are you sure that it isn't some kind of trap setup by Voldemort?"

Harry sighed softly.

"Mione, I have always been aware of the link with Voldemort ever since the night of his resurrection. Even though he had been employing Occlumency to keep me out of his mind after the fiasco at the Ministry, I could still feel it in the back of my mind, sometimes even echoes of intense emotions. Now it's just gone, like it had never even existed in the first place."

He explained in a serious voice, his eyes never leaving that of her friends. She seemed to believe him from the look on her face.

"Whatever happened to you must be really powerful for it to destroy the link created by a backfired killing curse." Hermione stated after what felt like an eternity to him.

'Well duh Hermione.'

"Did you inform Professor Dumbledore about this?" she asked him.

Harry felt slightly uncomfortable at the question, he did not want to approach the Headmaster with this. Not until he had some idea about what was happening to him at the very least.

"No I didn't and before you suggest it I am not going to inform him. He is already busy searching for Voldemort's Horcurxes, I do not want to concern him with my problems."

She didn't look very much convinced with his reasoning.

"Look, if we don't find anything by the start of the new term, then I will ask his help as soon as we get to the castle. I swear." he tried.

Hermione sighed in defeat, knowing how stubborn he can be when he made up his mind about something.

"Alright Harry, but you will do as you promised or I will personally drag you to the Headmaster's office."

Harry didn't doubt her statement a bit.

"I will Mione." he reassured her.

"You said your mind felt clearer after the incident last night?" she inquired after few seconds.

"Much clearer than I have ever felt in my whole life. In fact I suspect that my sudden accomplishment in the area of non-verbal casting is directly related to it."

She bit her lower lip and nodded her head absently.

He waited patiently knowing that she wouldn't be able to hear anything in this state from numerous past experiences.

"What about verbal casting Harry?" she finally asked.

Harry frowned as he thought about it.

"Now that you mention, it is a lot easier than before." he said.

Hermione looked at him thoughtfully before speaking.

"You may be right in your suspicion Harry, but that gives birth to an entirely new question."

"And that is?" he prompted.

"Why did your mental link with V-Voldemort affect the clarity of your mind in the first place."

Harry sat back in surprise.

'That is a very good question but not the most important one at the moment.'

"Let's leave that question for later Mione and concentrate on reason for my adverse reaction to the vampire." he said.

Hermione let out a huff of annoyance at that.

"Fine, but we should find the reason for my question Harry. It may be of some importance, you know." she said in a no nonsense tone.

"Of course we can Hermione." Harry promised her, acknowledging the truth in her words.

"Good. Now, we can be certain from your explanation that your encounter with the vampire was what triggered this whole thing in the first place. And since it is very apparent that the reaction was not caused by any kind of curse or potions or even V-Voldemort, it is a natural one. Natural for you that is."

He nodded his head as he had come to the same conclusion earlier.

"We need to find out just what is different about you that make such a reaction natural for you." Hermione stated firmly.

"But how can we do that?" he asked confused.

The brunette had a look that screamed 'isn't that obvious' at him.

"It is very simple Harry, we research your family tree."

He blinked, twice.

"My family tree." he whispered in bewilderment.

"Yes Harry, your family tree. You know what a family tree is, don't you?" she asked slowly.

Harry looked at her indigently.

"Of course I know what a family tree is Hermione, Sirius showed me his at the Headquarters. I just don't know my family tree, hell I don't even know all my grandparents names." he said, slightly embarrassed.

His friend nodded in understanding.

"Well you can make one by research or you can get the goblins to do that for you." the brunette suggested.

"They do that kind of work at Gringotts." Harry exclaimed.

Hermione rolled her eyes before speaking.

"It's a bank run by the goblins Harry, they do any kind of work as long as you paid them for it."

He couldn't deny that, the goblins were greedy bastards after all.

"I will write them a letter as soon as I reach the Burrow then." he said and his friend nodded her head in approval.

He could even ask Bill's help with the task, as the eldest Weasley son would be in the Burrow for the Christmas along with his fiancé Fleur Delacouer.

A question suddenly popped into his mind and he almost groaned out load for not thinking of it sooner.

"Hermione, how will my family tree help finding answers to my problem anyway?" he asked a bit sheepishly.

She chuckled softly.

"That's very simple Harry. Whatever is happening to you seems almost genetic in nature, which means there must be at least one other person in your family with your condition. We find them and we find the answers to your problem?" the girl explained.

"But how would we find the person amongst countless others form my family tree."

Hermione looked at him seriously.

"Research Harry, lots and lots of research."

He groaned out loud at her answer, already dreading the process.

"So, you took all those books to research about the vampires?" Hermione inquired a few minutes later.

"Not all of them. Some of them are about magical wolves and extinct magical creatures."

"Why?" she asked in puzzlement.

Harry shrugged his shoulders, his face coloring a bit.

"I just thought that the reaction was due to my animagus form being a natural enemy of the vampires."

The bushy haired witch smiled in amusement.

"That's a very good guess Harry but it is not at all possible."

"Why?" he asked a bit defensively.

"Because all the natural enemies of the vampires are from the magical world Harry and it is impossible to have a magical creature as an animagus form." Hermione explained.

"It has never happened before?"

His friend shook her head in negative.

"Never Harry, a witch or wizard's magic is too different from that of the magical creatures." she informed him.

"Oh."

"But it was a pretty good theory."

Hermione tried to console him. He offered her a small smile for her effort.

A comfortable silence fell between the two friends, with both of them taking in the scenery of the snow filled lands passing rapidly through the glasses of the window in their car.

"It's time for me to go make my rounds Harry." Hermione informed him, getting his attention away from the scenery.

"See you soon Mione. Try not to curse Ron if you happen to see him during your rounds." he said in mock seriousness.

The brunette scowled playfully as she stood up from her seat.

"I will try my best Harry but no promises." she told him before leaving the compartment after she had removed the charms he had cast upon it earlier.

The smile vanished from the face of the boy-who-lived as soon as the compartment door slid close behind his best female friend and he let out a small sigh of relief.

Hermione understood the situation he was in and she had readily agreed to help him with it, just like he had expected she would.

After all, she had always stood by his side and cared for him ever since the day he had saved her from the mountain troll back during Halloween in his first year. That's one of the main reason he considered the bossy girl to be his sister in all but blood.

His friends were one of the main reasons that made his life worthwhile despite all the shite that the fate threw at him.

'Enough of the mushy stuff Potter, back to the matter at hand.'

The conversation he had with Hermione proved most of his theories he had come up with regarding the situation. It didn't matter that she blew off one them, the one that he considered the most likely reason for the situation he was in but she did provide him with a way to find one.

Harry was also very excited at the prospect of drawing his family tree with the help of the goblins, and to get to know at least some history of his family from the names of those that came before him. For a teen who was orphaned at the tender age of one and a half, that meant more than any vault full of gold galleons.

'I just hope her idea actually works out.'

He did feel very bad about leaving out a few incidents that happened that morning, like the strange scent he had picked up in the hallway from the group of Slytherin girls and the one he got from the Thestrals that were drawing the carriages.

'But I have a very good reason for hiding them from her.'

Even though the scent from the Thestrals had smelt remarkably similar to that of the vampire, it didn't mess up his emotions like the scent from the vampire did. So he didn't bother mentioning it.

He didn't say anything about the scent from the hallway because he had a feeling that it would open a can of worms that he couldn't possibly contain. It seemed a bit stupid even to himself but he was very much afraid of the scent and the emotions it aroused for the fraction of a second.

Sighing softly, he brought his attention to the latest issue that Hermione had picked up from his explanation earlier.

'Why is the absence of my mental link with Lord Voldemort affecting my mind to this extent?'

He had thought that the only purpose of the accidental link was to transmit emotions and thoughts from the mind of the self styled Dark Lord or to alert Harry of his presence when he was near him. But now he was very curious about the very nature of the link that apparently had more adverse effects than the splitting headaches and the occasional loss of consciousness due to the visions.

'Did Dumbledore known about it?'

The ancient wizard had said that there had never been such a connection in the history of the wizarding world when he had questioned him about it. Albus Dumbledore had the habit of providing him with half truths but the man had never outright lied to him. So he believed that the Headmaster hadn't known everything about the link, at least for now.

But he did make a mental note to question the old man about it when/if he informed him about the events that took place at Professor Slughorn's Christmas party.

Harry wondered if Voldemort had discovered about the absence of their link by now.

'I don't think so.'

For one, his Headmaster had informed him earlier in the year that the snake-human hybrid had been employing Occlumency to keep Harry out of his mind at all time. If he had somehow discovered its absence, he would no doubt have ordered Snape to get more information regarding it, which would in turn have resulted in Harry being dragged to his Headmaster's office.

No, Voldemort was definitely not aware of the lack of their mental link, not yet anyway. But he would love to see old snake face's expression when he finally discovered about it.

'He'll probably think that I am dead.'

He shook his head in amusement, a smile twisting his lips at the image his mind had conjured.

Lounging back in the seat charmed with comfort charms, Harry dropped his head to his chest with his eyes closed and his breathing becoming deep and regular. It had been a rather long and exciting day and he needed some rest before the train reached the King's Cross station in London.

Even though he had never spent a Christmas at the Burrow, he had no doubt that it would be well past midnight before he could go to sleep at the Weasley family home.

He had no idea that the fates were about to throw the figurative monkey wrench in his plans, again.

Harry's nap was disturbed not ten minutes later by the whisper of the compartment door slowly sliding open, as if the person was intent upon entering it without alerting him. But whoever was trying to enter didn't know that Harry was a very light sleeper, awakening at the slightest of sound which was the reason he usually slept with a silencing charm around his bed.

It also eliminated the possibility of the person entering his compartment being Hermione or anyone of his friends as they were very much aware of his sleeping habit.

'Why can't I ever seem to get a break?'

He groaned mentally as his hand slowly crept to the pocket containing his wand while listening intently to any sound made by the unknown intruder. No further sound came from the doorway after the noise made by the person rushing inside the compartment soon after its door slid open.

Even as Harry's hand wrapped around the smooth shaft of his wand, a part of him was very confused by the lack of any noise but the possibility of silencing charm kept his grip on his wand.

'Remember what Moody had said Potter, always maintain Constant Vigilance.'

Cracking his eyelids open by a fraction, he was able to see the person who had apparently managed to sneak into his compartment.

The scene that greeted him made him open his eyes wide and blinked them repeatedly when the scene refused to dissolve into nothing like hallucinations are supposed to. He then proceeded to rub them roughly for a good measure to make sure that he wasn't dreaming in his nap.

'What in the name of holy Merlin is she doing?'

The girl, as her waist length raven black hair clearly indicated, stood very close to the sliding door with her wand held loosely in her right hand that rested at her sides. Her other hand was busy holding the privacy curtains aside so that she could peek through the resulting crack without anyone noticing her doing so, well expect for him anyway.

'I very much doubt that she even noticed that this compartment was occupied when she had entered it.'

He thought, a bit of amusement bleeding through the wariness that he still felt in his mind at the mystery girl's rather unusual entrance.

The standard Hogwarts robes she was wearing had a bronze trim at its edges, declaring to everyone that she belonged to the house that treasured knowledge the most. Based on what little he could see of her profile, he guessed her to be in her third or fourth year at the school.

'I wonder who she's hiding from.'

The thought flashed through his mind as he continued gazing at the girl who still had her eyes fixed on the other side of the compartment. His mind tried to guess her identity unsuccessfully as the seconds he spent watching her turned into minutes without her making any movement.

"Finally, I thought for a moment whether you were hit by a petrifying curse or something." he stated out loud when her body visibly relaxed in relief about ten minutes later.

It was a very bad mistake.

The girl spun around with the grace of a professional dancer, her wand pointing straight at his chest and a stunner was launched before she had even came to a rest.

It was a very good bit of spell work, judging from its density and the intensity of its colour. Combined with the speed with which the girl had cast it, most students would be knocked out on their arse before they had even thought of defending themselves.

Unfortunately for the raven haired girl, Harry was anything but normal.

The boy-who-lived had raised his wand in front of him and had cast a shield charm before the stunner had even made it halfway across the small distance that separated them. His assailant watched in open mouthed surprise as the bright red spell impacted his shield.

A reflective shield to be exact.

That particular shield reflects the low level hexes and curses back at the caster with speed directly proportional to the strength of the hex/curse and the magic of person using the said shield.

The girl had enough time to widen her eyes and open her mouth to try and cast a shield of her own before her own stunner hit her full in her stomach, sending her to the land of unconsciousness almost instantly.

Harry reflexively levitated her as she started to tip backwards, her wand falling to the wooden floor making a small click at the impact.

Only when he had moved the unconscious girl to the empty seat in front of him did he realize what had just happened and he shook his head in exasperation as he summoned the fallen wand with a flick of his own.

"Well, that could have gone a lot better."

**A.N: Thank you for your review people. **


	5. Chapter 5

** I AM WOLF**

**DISCLAIMER: I do not own Harry Potter or the Twilight.**

**An Unusual Introduction**

Harry James Potter let out a small sigh of frustration as he stared at the unconscious of the girl lying on the seat opposite to his own. He was taking in every single one of her features in the hopes of figuring out her identity.

His self appointed task, which had started the moment he had deposited the stunned girl on the empty seat, had been going on for over fifteen minutes. But success still seemed to be far away from his reach.

The only information that he was able to uncover from her appearance was that she belonged to the house of Ravenclaw. And it was something even a toddler from the wizarding world could tell from the bronze trim on her robes.

'Give it up Potter, you are no near discovering her identity than Voldemort advocating world peace.'

The sarcastic voice of his consciousness echoed throughout his mind and he had to agree with it, much to his own annoyance.

Her features were a bit hard to forget to tell the truth and he would have remembered if he had ever heard her name even in passing.

Deep brown hair, which had reminded him of Honeyduke's best dark chocolate, with a few streaks of much lighter brown fell all the way to her waist in gentle waves. Her pure white skin had no visible freckle or blemish on them and a distant part of his mind noticed that it complemented her hair quite well.

Traces of baby fat still remained on her heart shaped face giving her the look of a natural innocence. Cupid bow lips that were the color of ripe strawberries, were parted slightly as she took slow but steady breaths in her knocked out state.

Even though her eyelids were closed, he knew that her irises were green in color but it resembled jade than his own emerald. She stood an inch over five feet in height and he couldn't help but notice that her body had just started to mature.

To summarize, she was a very cute girl who would, without any doubt, grow up to an equally beautiful woman in the not so distant future.

The standard Hogwarts robes she wore were made from what he guessed to be acromantula silk, which he knew from the experience of shopping for his own robes, to be five to ten times costlier than those made from cotton or wool. Along with the few simple but expensive jewels that were visible on her person, it was very clear that she belonged to one of those thriving pureblood houses of the Great Britain.

'Fate really enjoys messing with my life.'

She could've been some extremely well of muggleborn, but the small ornate ring on the middle figure of her right hand blew away any such notion. He knew a member ring of an Ancient and Noble house when he saw one, Sirius had made sure of that.

That only made the situation all the more troublesome for the boy-who-lived, as it most definitely would be seen as an attack on the pureblood house she belonged to.

'Thank Merlin that I'm the heir apparent to an Ancient and Noble house myself.'

That would help him immensely if she decided to retaliate and things went south, which she probably would considering that he was responsible for the situation she was in.

Thinking back, he reckoned that he shouldn't have startled her the way he did. Especially when it had been abundantly clear from the way she had acted ever since entering the compartment that she was very nervous in addition to being highly tensed and probably expecting a fight.

'Nope, startling her was definitely not a good idea for both of us.'

It was a very good thing that he had kept his wand in hand even after realizing that the girl wasn't there to hurt him. Else he would be the one unconscious and laying on his back on the wooden floor of the train, not the mystery girl.

Even if he had successfully defended himself, he acknowledged that whoever had taught her to duel had done a splendid job. Something that was pretty obvious from her startlingly quick reflex, almost instantaneous reaction and the ease with which she had cast the stunner, non-verbally none the less.

Harry just hoped that she didn't belong to one of those bigoted houses that supported Voldemort for a wide number of reasons.

He wasn't worried about the said situation giving his enemies a perfectly legitimate reason to drag him in front of the Wizengamont for another trial. Being known as the chosen one had its uses, especially when the current Minister of magic yearned for his assistance, to be the MOM's poster boy to calm the people of the wizarding world.

What he was worried, was the reason for such training given to the children going to Hogwarts, if she belonged to such a house that is.

A particularly hard jolt of the train brought his attention back to the unconscious girl lying on the seat.

'Better try to resolve the situation before Hermione gets back from her rounds Potter.'

The thought popped into his mind and he acknowledged it immediately, as he did not want to listen to one of his best friend's famous rants for the rest of the journey to London.

To be frank, he would choose getting hexed by the brown haired girl over listening to Hermione's rant any day of the week.

With one last sigh, Harry waved his wand over the prone form of the said girl while casting the rennervate non-verbally.

Her eyelids snapped open the next instant and she sat up on her seat with a gasp while blinking her jade green eyes rapidly. Having hit by the spell a number of times in the past himself, he was well aware of its after effects. So he waited patiently for the girl to regain her bearings.

He didn't have to wait very long.

As soon as her eyes fell upon his form sitting on the seat opposite to her own, the said eyes became very alert as confusion and dizziness immediately drained away from them. Her hands automatically reached for what he presumed to be her wand, even as she jumped to her feet, her body taught as a drawn bow.

A hint of fear seeped into her features when she noticed the absence of the magical wand and she started inching towards the door unconsciously, her cautious eyes never leaving his seated form.

"Relax Miss, I mean you no harm."

He said in a soft, reassuring voice and it had the desired effect of stopping her progress almost instantly. The honesty in his tone seemed to confuse her greatly as it was evident from the emotions playing on her face.

She remained frozen in her spot as she continued to look at him intently, as if he was a puzzle that she couldn't find a way to solve.

Surprise joined the emotions already occupying her face when she had realized just who the short, scrawny, raven haired teenager, she was sharing the compartment was.

"Y-You are H-Harry P-Potter." she stuttered rather nervously.

He almost chuckled in amusement a moment later as all the color drained away from her face, indicating that she had finally recalled the memories of her trying to curse him and getting hit with her own spell in the process.

"Yes I am." he said, motioning her to take her seat.

The girl looked uncertain at his request, pinning him with a penetrating gaze for a full five seconds. He had to crumb the urge to squirm under the surprisingly sharp gaze of the younger teen.

Apparently finding his intentions harmless, she sat facing him with her hands folded on her lap rather elegantly.

'She's definitely a pureblood.'

They both sat starring at each other silently, waiting for the other to make the first move.

Harry was never one for patience or uncomfortable silence, so he started speaking to the cute brunette.

"You have me at the disadvantage here Miss, you seem to know my name but I have no idea what yours is."

She blushed in embarrassment at the end of his statement, before introducing herself.

"Forgive me. I'm Astoria Greengrass, fourth year Ravenclaw."

Harry smiled slightly as he shook her hand, not missing the frown that flashed across her face as he did so.

He had heard of the Greengrass house, though not in great detail. But he was aware of the fact that they were an Ancient and Noble House of the Wizarding world, dating back over eight centuries. And that they remained firmly neutral in the war between the Light and the Dark, along with a few like minded families.

The chosen one sighed internally at the prospect of at least one of his hopes coming true.

"Nice to meet you Miss. Greengrass, though I wish we had met under better circumstances." he said before offering her wand by its shaft.

She appeared startled for some reason that had nothing to do with her wand, as she was looking not at it but at him rather strangely. Just when he was about to get her attention, she accepted it with a bright smile of someone who had finally figured out a puzzle and pocketed it in a show of trust.

He did the same with his own, to be polite and not wanting to alarm her.

"Thank you." she said, her cheeks coloring slightly.

"No need for that Miss. Greengrass, after all I am the one responsible for you losing your wand in the first place. On that regard, please let me apologize to you for my inappropriate actions earlier."

Astoria looked at him as if he was out of his mind.

"Why are you apologizing to me Mr. Potter, I'm the one who tried to curse you and hence I should be the one apologizing to you."

Harry was taken aback by the words that left her mouth, he had expected at least some anger from the Ravenclaw.

"Please call me Harry. You don't have to apologize because I shouldn't have startled you when you were already tensed and highly alert."

He held up a hand to forestall any interruptions from her, earning an exaggerated pout from the disgruntled Ravenclaw.

"And there is no need for you to apologize to me because you have every right to be cautious in these dark days, I would have done the same if our conditions were reversed. Besides I wasn't the one to be knocked out senseless by my own spell."

She scowled playfully at the last part of his statement, making him smile slightly.

"Well, apology accepted I guess. And please don't remind me of the 'getting knocked by my own spell' part again or tell anyone about it. Daph would have my hide if she were to find out about it. Oh and call me Astoria if I have to address you by your given name, Harry."

He nodded his head in acceptance.

"Is 'Daph' the one who taught you to how to duel?" Harry asked the brunette.

She nodded her head.

"Ever since she had returned from her first year at Hogwarts, apparently she was concerned about my well being within the halls of Hogwarts for some reason."

"But you would've been eight or nine at the most, what about the underage laws?"

Astoria giggled slightly, seemingly amused by his ignorance.

"Ministry can't detect the identity of the person doing magic, just the use of magic itself. And I had turned ten at that time." she stated cheerfully.

Harry was shocked into silence by that little tidbit. If what she said was true and he was pretty sure it was, he understood that students with magical parents would be able to use magic away from Hogwarts with the ministry being none the wiser.

'Bloody pureblood bigots and their god forsaken prejudice, better not mention this to Hermione, Potter. Not if you wish to keep your hearing intact at the end of the train ride.'

A small smile did grace his lips when he realized the fact that he could use magic at the Burrow freely during the two weeks he would be spending there. He quickly decided to get someone to teach him some advanced and useful spells. Bill or the twins for instance, he was pretty sure that they would know such spells and also understand his need to learn them.

"So Astoria, mind telling me the name of the person you were hiding from." he asked after a few seconds of silence.

"Hiding?" she asked trying to look confused but failing miserably.

"Yes hiding. That's the reason you sneaked into my compartment, didn't you?" he questioned her slowly.

"Of course I wasn't hiding from anyone Harry. I was merely trying to avoid a confrontation with a particularly unpleasant individual."

Harry had to chuckle at the statement, making her playfully glare at him.

"Does this 'particularly unpleasant individual' have a name by any chance."

She nodded her head before answering.

"He does."

He waited for almost ten seconds before understanding the reason for her silence, which made him shake his head in resignation.

"What is his name Astoria?" he asked in resignation.

"Theodore Nott Junior."

His body tensed ever so slightly at the name of teen whose father was among the Death Eater's who had answered their master's call soon after his resurrection.

Fortunately, the girl didn't seem to notice it or she had noticed but decided to ignore it.

"Aren't you going to ask me why I was expecting a confrontation with that prat?" she asked when Harry didn't speak for some time.

He just shrugged his shoulders before answering.

"Well I presume that the reason for that must be pretty personal in nature and I don't pry into other's personal business. Not without some very good reason at the least, and satisfying my curiosity is definitely not a good reason."

"How about when you asked me who I am hiding from, isn't that prying into other people's business?" she asked slyly.

Harry smiled slightly.

"I wanted to know just in case that the said person barges in here and starts throwing around curses, I'm sure that qualifies as a pretty good reason."

She appeared amused at his answer for some reason, but decided that he did not want to know the said reason due to the mischievousness visible in her eyes.

"You are not at all what I had expected the 'boy-who-lived' to be." Astoria said after a few moments of silence.

"And what did you expect Astoria?"

"I thought you would be an arrogant prat with an ego the size of British Isle." she answered immediately, making him laugh out loud.

"Only the British Isle?" he asked "So what do you think of me now?"

"I just know that you are not an arrogant prat with an ego the size of British Isle, as I have only met you." Astoria replied with a straight face.

That made look at her with a slyly smile twisting her lips.

"Are you implying that you want to get to know me better Miss. Greengrass?" he asked in a pompous tone that Percy Weasley usually used.

The fourth year's face colored a bright red at the suggestive look that accompanied his question as she tried to glare at him.

"In your dreams Potter." she yelled playfully after getting her blush under control, and they both broke out laughing.

It felt good to laugh.

Once they had finally stopped laughing, the pair spent their time discussing about a wide range of inconsequential things like their respective course work, quidditch, the staff, house, friends etc. The boy-who-lived found that talking with the younger girl to be very relaxing, as it kept his mind off the more serious and troublesome topics that usually plagued his mind whenever he was alone.

However he did become slightly nervous when Astoria breached the topic of the families. The Ravenclaw seemed to notice it too, which was evident from the fact that she never once pushed him for information regarding his own. Something he was immensely grateful for as the Dursley's were still a sour topic for the chosen one, and he usually avoided talking about them even with his best friends.

So he listened attentively as she spent almost ten minutes describing her family in great detail, very much interested to learn more about the girl in front of him.

The chosen one was very fascinated by the end of her rather impressive monologue, and a bit surprised by the love and pride that was very apparent in her tone as she talked about her family.

For a moment he couldn't help but wonder whether he would talk about his own family if the events on the Halloween night had not happened, he would never know.

That naturally made him think of Voldemort which intern had his new found anger shimmer ominously at the back of his mind, but he quashed it stubbornly.

He did not want to act like a madman in front of the cheery girl, fortunately for him she was too immersed in her talking to notice the flash of anger upon his face.

"…and the boy almost runs off from the room, almost knocking over several guests. Mum just looked at Dad in exasperation and said 'You had to raise her to be an emotional clone of yours, didn't you. I swear David, your eldest daughter is going to scare off all her suitors with just that cold glare of hers. And don't even get me started on your own over protective routine.'. When the pair of them just looked at her with identical expressions of amusement, she went all red in her face before storming away, forgetting that she was in the middle of the ball. She was mortified the next morning of course and she almost made dad sleep on-"

Astoria was interrupted by a weird sound, probably an alarm, coming from her watch. She took one look at the time before jumping to her with a guilty expression on her face.

"I'm sorry Harry, but I had promised to meet Daph at two." the girl apologized looking slightly uncomfortable.

Apparently she had enjoyed the conversation as much as him.

"No problem Astoria, you can't keep your sister waiting. Enjoy your holidays and have a merry Christmas." he stated smiling reassuringly.

"You too Harry, guess I will see you on the next term." the youngest Greengrass stated before sliding the compartment door open and taking off in search of her elder sister.

Harry flicked his wand, closing and locking the door before letting the smile drop off his face.

He was sad that she had to leave, not only since their conversation helped him relax for a little while, but because he actually enjoyed talking to the quirky fourth year Ravenclaw.

She was definitely someone whom he could talk to again, even become good friends with given the chance.

Some small part of him still couldn't believe that he had managed to have a completely normal conversation with a girl he had met less than an hour ago, let alone wanting to be friends with her. But the larger part admonished him not to look the gift horse in its mouth and he agreed with it.

After all he had plenty of reasons for his admittedly unusual behavior, plenty of valid reasons.

For one, he truly believed that she wasn't to be blamed for trying to curse him. It was his fault for startling her and to tell the truth he was actually glad that someone other than himself had learned something from Alastor 'Madeye' Moody.

And she was neither bothered by the fact that she had tried and failed to curse someone let alone The Harry Potter. Nor was she in awe of meeting him in person like most of people in the wizarding world would have been, which was proved by several instances in his past.

She didn't blush or stammer like most of the girls talking to him did and to his eternal relief, she didn't try to flirt with him like some of them. It had really freaked him out when a second year from his house tried to do that at the beginning of this year, much to the amusement of Ron while Hermione had looked downright scandalized.

'It was a good thing that we were in the common room at that time or else Hermione would probably have hexed her for her actions.'

Most of all, her playful nature and cheery personality made it hard not to like the younger girl.

There was also the fact that she didn't bring up the topic of his adventures at and out of Hogwarts, something even strangers delighted in asking him when they got the chance.

In short, he had every reason to talk to her again.

To tell the truth, Harry didn't have much of a choice in that regard, as the brunette had declared that he was to meet her sister at the beginning of their next term, when he had informed that he had no idea who she was.

"How can you not know the Ice Queen of Hogwarts?" she had almost yelled upon learning that.

He had heard of that particular term in one of the conversation between Dean and Seamus that he walked upon, but he didn't stop to ask any questions as he had some important things to do.

Apparently her sister, Daphne Greengrass was also a sixth year from Slytherin house and was rather popular among their year for some reason. A reason that Astoria refused to divulge to him, stating that he will find it out when he met her.

Harry usually tended to avoid Slytherins in general, not because he thought them all to be evil but because of Ron's prejudice against them, he didn't want to endanger his very first friendship. Snape being their Head of the house also added towards the incentive to stay away from them.

And he avoided the gossips circulating at Hogwarts with a passion. Having been the primary gossip material ever since his childhood spent with his relatives, he understood the effects it had on the concerned person better than any other student at Hogwarts..

When he had revealed this to the younger girl, she had nodded her head in understanding, compassion shinning in her blue green eyes.

'Besides meeting the eldest Greengrass daughter may end up being an interesting event based on Astoria's description. I wonder if she would agree to duel with me sometime, considering she was the one who had taught her sister in magical dueling it would be quite an experience.'

The title 'Ice Queen' didn't faze him in the least. Having met the likes of Lord Voldemort more than once, he was certain he could handle a sixth year Slytherin.

Yup, he would definitely like to meet the elusive Miss Daphne Greengrass, just like he would like to meet her parents.

His musings was interrupted by the sound of the compartment door sliding open again and it made him snap his head in its direction, his hand reaching for his wand reflexively.

He relaxed when he realized that it was none other than his best friend returning from her rounds, looking a bit exhausted.

"Are you all right Mione?" he asked as she slumped into the seat in front of him.

She nodded her head while tucking some of her wild locks behind an ear and away from her face.

"I'm fine Harry, the rounds were a bit exhausting with everyone being excited about the holidays."

Harry nodded his head before smirking slightly.

"You didn't hex Ron did you?"

His question was met with a snort and roll of her eyes.

"No I didn't Harry. Actually I didn't even see him during the rounds, thank Merlin for small favors." Hermione answered looking visibly relived at that.

Few minutes passed in silence as Hermione relaxed with her eyes closed and Harry musing his meeting with the youngest Greengrass when a thought popped into his mind.

"Say Hermione, do you know anything about the Greengras-" his question was interrupted by their compartment door being opened yet again, by the portly trolley lady this time.

"Anything off the trolley dears?" she asked in her usual motherly tone.

Harry realized that he was once again starving, the rather large breakfast he had in the morning seemingly vanished without trace. So he waved Hermione off and moved towards the door to get them some food while pulling out a handful of galleons form his pocket.

His friends raised an eyebrow at the arm load of food he had bought from the trolley lady but didn't question him, probably remembering that his increased appetite was one of the after effects of his encounter with the vampire last night.

She actually looked pleased that he would be eating far more than he normally did, as she had always insisted that he should eat more to fill his scrawny frame.

"What were you asking Harry?" Hermione asked after she had accepted her share of food which consisted of an apple, a large bacon and egg sandwich and a pitcher of pumpkin juice.

"Do you know anything about the Greengrass family?" he questioned after swallowing the large bite of one of his chicken sandwich.

Hermione chewed the bit of her apple while looking at him in confusion.

"I know the general information, why do you ask?"

"Just being curious Mione."

It was clear from the look on her face that he didn't believe a word of his.

"Alright, I met Astoria Greengrass and I want to know more about her family."

That made her pause in her actions, as she looked at him in surprise.

"Where did you meet her?" she asked once she swallowed her mouthful.

"Right here, in the compartment. Apparently she was hiding from Theodore Nott for some reason."

"Theodore Nott?"

"Yes, can you tell what you know about the Greengrass family now?" he asked again.

Hermione nodded her head and started talking after taking a sip of her pumpkin juice.

"Hmmm the Greengrasses, as you probably know they are one of the Ancient and Noble houses of the wizarding world, meaning that they had existed for at least half a millennia and they had served for the crown before the statue of secrecy were implemented."

He nodded his head as he moved on to his third sandwich, he knew this already.

"And they are rich, the richest in the British wizarding world to be exact. David Greengrass, the current head of their house is a brilliant business man who had managed to almost triple his family fortune once his father had passed away, a few years after his graduation from Hogwarts."

The information did surprise him slightly.

"Wait a minute, do you mean to tell me that Malfoy's aren't the richest around here."

Hermione scowled at him slightly for interrupting her, he just raised his hands in surrender before motioning for her to continue while starting on his second apple.

"For your information, the Malfoy's are the third richest after Greengrasses and the Blacks. As I was saying, David Greengrass took over the family business when he was still in his teens and built it into a formidable empire by some brilliant strategies."

She didn't notice him almost choke on his sandwich when she mentioned his late godfather's family. He had informed to his friends that Sirius had left him with all his money and No.12 Grimmauld place in his will but hid the fact that the animagus had made him the heir to the Ancient and Noble house of Black in the event of his death.

Harry had just assumed that he only had to add 'Black' to his name when he had reached his majority as a result of being its heir, but this he never imagined. He was sure that the sly dog was laughing his arse off in the afterlife.

'Better check it out with some help form Bill.'

He made the mental note as he continued to listen to his friend's monologue.

"He married Angelica Davis when he was twenty three, a marriage that shocked most of the purebloods due to the Davis being a relatively new family with only a moderate amount of wealth. Their first daughter Daphne Angelica, was born on 1st May 1980 while their second daughter, your friend Astoria Margaret was born on 3rd June 1982."

Harry recorded the date of Astoria's birth in his mind for future.

"The Greengrass along with their allies remained neutral during Voldemort's first war and still remain so as a matter of fact. Though, I somehow doubt that they can do that for long, what with Voldemort actively trying to recruit them for their wealth and all."

He frowned slightly.

"Are you implying that they will join Voldemort?" he asked getting a bit defensive.

Hermione looked at him incredulously.

"Of course not Harry, they will never join the Dark Lord or anyone like him."

Harry looked at the bushy haired witch intently with a small frown after she had answered his question, she had looked and sounded too sure for it to be only her prediction, thought or even a guess.

"How can you be so sure Hermione?" he asked softly, his eyes narrowed with suspicion.

His friend looked distinctively uncomfortable at the question.

"I don't understand what you mean Harry." Hermione said, looking away from his face.

That all but proved his suspicion.

"Don't act stupid Mione, it doesn't suite you at all." he stated calmly, with steel in his tone.

It took her over a minute to start talking.

"Well, I know they won't join Voldemort because Daphne told me so." she answered slowly, visibly cringing as if expecting an explosion from him.

"Daphne, you know Astoria's sister?" his tone was filled with his confusion.

She just nodded her head, still looking nervous.

"But how do you know her?" he asked making her wince slightly.

"We met during one of my study sessions in the library and became friends over time."

"And when exactly did this event take place?" he questioned again.

Hermione looked positively scared when she gave her answer.

"During the second week of our second year."

Her answer shocked him greatly.

"But why didn't you tell me this before?"

Hermione graced him with 'the answer should be obvious' look on her face.

"I didn't want you to be mad at me for becoming friends with a Slytherin." she still answered.

"You thought I would be mad at you for befriending someone not from our house. Mione, the last time I checked my name was Harry James Potter, not Ronald Billius Weasley." Harry said in exasperation.

'Honestly, I thought she knew me better than that.'

"But what about Malfoy, don't you hate him?" she asked after a few seconds of silence.

"I don't hate Malfoy Mione, I just don't like him in the least. I don't like him for the reason that he's a pureblood bigot who considers himself superior to everyone other human and a selfish prat who would do anything to save his arse. Not because of the house he was sorted into over six years ago."

Hermione listened to his explanation with great interest but he could see that she was still somewhat unconvinced. He sighed internally and combed his mind for something that would prove to her that he truly didn't mind her being friends with a Slytherin.

A thought popped into his mind, giving the perfect ammunition to convince her.

"Do you know that the sorting hat wanted to put me in Slytherin?" he asked smirking slightly.

That made her drop her mouth open in shock.

"WHAT?" she yelled out loud before slapping her hand on her mouth.

Harry nodded his head slowly, trying to prevent the laughter that threatened to escape him.

"If Malfoy hadn't got sorted into the Slytherin house before me, I would have probably agreed with it too." he commented, his smirk widening a bit.

Hermione shook her head with a wry smile twisting her lips.

"I just can't begin to envision you being in Slytherin Harry, no matter how hard I try. Thank Merlin you were able to convince the hat to sort you in Gryffindor, imagine what that would've done to the wizarding world."

Harry mirrored her smile before voicing his own thoughts.

"Imagine what that would've done to Snape."

His friend snickered in amusement.

"He probably would've had a heart attack, or else resigned from his position as the Head of the Slytherin." Hermione said quite seriously.

The two friends exchanged one look before breaking down with laughter.

"So, how well do you know Miss. Daphne Greengrass?" he asked after they got their breaths back from laughing so hard.

Hermione looked at him curiously but answered his question all the same.

"I think I know her pretty well." she answered slowly.

He got an excited look on his face.

"Can you tell me why she's known as the Ice Queen? Astoria won't tell me the reason no matter how much I begged."

From the way Hermione rolled her eyes as she settled back in her seat with a novel in her hand, he very much doubted he would be getting any answers for her.

With a shrug of his shoulders, Harry leaned back against his seat to continue his interrupted nap. He needed his rest after all.

"Wake me up when we reach the King's Cross Mione."

**A.N: Thank you for your review's people.**


	6. Chapter 6

**I AM WOLF**

**DISCLAIMER: I do not own Harry Potter or the Twilight saga.**

**Change of Plans**

_Magical wolves, which are considered as one of the apex predator in the magical world, are classified into four main species. A classification that is based upon the nature of the magic they were born with rather than their habitat or appearance, as it is in the non-magical community. These four species are further divided into a number of subcategories depending upon the unique abilities granted to them by their innate magic. _

_Great wolves and Royal wolves fall under the category of the Dire wolves of the magical world. They are, without any doubt, the largest, strongest and the most temperamental among all the canines that exists in both the magical and mundane worlds. An average Great wolf measures six feet from tail to snout and five from shoulder to paws, while the largest to be ever encountered measured almost twice the dimensions of an average Great wolf. Their magic gives them an almost legendary strength and stamina that makes it possible for these wolves to meet a Hippogriff head on and fight to a standstill. _

_Royal wolves, generally considered as the king of all wolves, are a rare magical mutation of the Great wolves, brought into existence by reasons yet to be determined by the experts. In addition to all the abilities and characteristics of the Great wolves, their mutated magic also grants them the aspect of invulnerability against most of the forms of magic, the only exception being the much feared killing curse. Their eyes, which are a startling gold in color, were the only thing that could differentiate between the two subspecies, as the eyes of the Great wolves look remarkably like molten silver. _

_Dire wolves of magical kind are found almost exclusively in the highly magical areas of the African continent, where large prey suited for their own size existed. They are also the only kind of the wolves that leads a lone life without any packs, expect for the season of mating that spans the length of two months each year. Any other encounter between another of its kind leads to a fight that lasts until the death of one opponent._

_Elemental wolves are those with the ability to control the natural elements to an extent with the help of their magic. Based the element they controlled, they are classified into five subspecies, air, earth, fire, water and shadow wolves. Each of these wolves inhibit parts of the world that are most suited for their elements, for example fire wolves are found in the areas of very high temperature, air wolves in high mountain ranges, shadow wolves in dark forests, etc. Their magic also makes it possible for to draw nourishment directly from their elements when needed though they prefer replenishing their energy the old fashioned way._

_Though these wolves use their elements directly in their hunt for prey, they chiefly use it to protect their territory form other predators magical and mundane, and for defending themselves against their foes. In appearance, they look remarkably like the Arctic wolves but the color of their coats are always some kind of variation of their elements._

_Trans wolves are the most common species to be found in the magical wolves, and their magic enables them to transform their body at their will. Depending upon the nature and extent of the said transformation, they are divided into a number of subspecies and which inhabit almost every part of the Earth. _

_Metamorphic wolves are capable of controlling their body mass and muscle density to suit their needs with the help of their magic. This ability, which is dependent on time, enables them to be the fastest among their kind, making them swift hunters of the wild. _

_Invisible wolves, as it's name would suggest, have the ability to turn themselves invisible to almost all senses. On research it is found that though their coat hairs have properties similar to that of a demiguise, these wolves are capable of controlling completely. Which means they can not only make themselves completely invisible but can also change their coats to match that of their surroundings, something that led to the creation of the disillusionment charm as true invisibility required much greater concentration and magical strength. Their magic also helped in masking their scents while making all of their movements absolutely soundless during their hunts, transforming them the silent assassins of the magical wild._

_Adaptive wolves are those that can change their body both externally and internally to survive in almost any environmental conditions that no other wolves can survive. That includes under the water, beneath the ground or even inside volcanoes._

_Hybrid wolves are those born as the result of the mating between wolves of magical and normal origins, though such events are extremely rare in occurrence. These species inherit superior physical prowess from their magical parent along with the longer lifespan found in all magical beings. But they don't always inherit the magical abilities of the said parent, and in the case they did, it is not as potent as possessed by a purebred wolf._

_In addition to these four main species, which are considered as the 'true wolves' of the magical world, there are two more breeds that are regarded as the 'false' wolves which exists in the realm of the wizards. They are the Animagus wolves and the Werewolves._

_Animagus wolves are self explanatory. They are the instances where a witch or wizard have some kind of non-magical wolf as their animagus form. Like every animagus, these witches and wizards inherit some of the said beasts superior senses along with their stamina, as a result of their transformation._

_Werewolves on the other hand, were the result of a faulty experimental spell misfired on a wizard who happened to be a wolf animagus, in the early twelfth century. The spell had the immediate effect of transforming and locking the wizard in his animagus form, erasing all of his human reasoning capabilities and inhibitions while inducing an overwhelming rage. A blinding rage that resulted in him attacking every human he laid his eyes on with savagery and instincts of a wild wolf. The wizard was killed with by the killing curse when every attempt to contain him had ultimately failed, and the event was put aside as another one of the unfortunate magical accidents that was common on those days. That was until the first full moon which immediately followed the incident, when all those who were survived the encounter with the mutated wizard before he was killed, transformed into a creature that had never been seen in the magical world. A creature that resembled half wolf, half human, with the same blinding rage of the dead wizard and it made them attack every human in their sight. Even though numerous extensive researches had been conducted on them, a cure for the curse which was later known as Lycanthropy is yet to be discovered._

_Vampires are the-_

_SQUEEELLLLL._

The metallic sound of the brakes of the train engaging brought his attention back from the medium sized book on magical creatures, which he had been reading for over an hour. He had opted for the said activity when it became very apparent that his best friend wouldn't be talking to him anytime soon, not with her nose buried in one of her novels she read occasionally. And any thoughts of resting had been thrown out of the window after his impromptu meeting with the fourth year Ravenclaw and the things he had learned from his conversation with his best friend following that.

Harry stifled a sigh and returned the book to his trunk before locking it shut as he felt the train slowing down after the almost seven hours of journey from the Hogsmeade station. Finding that his friend was still immersed in her book, he called out her name to get her attention.

"Hermione?"

His best friend looked up from her book, a dazed expression gracing her features, having pulled quite abruptly from the world that existed within the pages of her novel. He waited patiently for her to return to the world of living, knowing that the process would take at least a few seconds from several past experiences. When the confusion fully left her eyes, signaling her return from the fictional world and recognition flared in them, she gave him a inquiring look mixed with a sliver of irritation.

"I thought you would like to know that the train will be pulling into the nine and three quarters in a few seconds Mione." he stated with an amused smile at his friends expression. Her mouth formed an 'o' of surprise before she blushed slightly, realizing that she had once again lost herself in her reading.

"Oh, thank you Harry." Hermione muttered in embarrassment as she proceeded to stuff her book inside her trunk. The two friends then watched as the unrecognizable blurs transform into the tall buildings of London through the window, as the Hogwarts Express lost speed slowly, finally coming to a stop into the magically hidden section of the King's Cross station. They could already hear the hurried foot steps of their fellow students on the corridors of their car, along with the scrapping noise of the trunks they dragged.

Hermione slid open the door of their compartment before walking out and Harry followed her, dragging along his trunk charmed light weight beforehand. The pair slowly pushed themselves through the throng of students apparently eager to get off the train and to their family, who would be waiting for them in the platform.

When the pair of friends finally managed to step onto the platform, he simply stood in the spot for a moment, taking in his surroundings with curious eyes. It was his first time returning to the platform for the occasion of the Christmas holidays after all, having stayed at Hogwarts on the said holidays for his first fours years in the magical world and taken a portkey directly to No.12 Grimmauld place previous year due to his vision of witnessing the attack on Mr. Weasley.

The magically concealed platform was filled with witches and wizards, all wearing anxious expressions along with their winter clothes. Their actions and bodies projected their restlessness to the world, as they searched the throngs of students getting off the Hogwarts Express for their children. Once they did find them, they promptly disappeared from the platform by either apparation, activating a portkey or by crossing the barrier into the muggle section, after only a short greeting. Aurors wearing their crimson uniform robes were stationed throughout the platform with their wand already in their hands, eyes alert and wary, ready to jump into action at the first sign of trouble. The signs of war starred at him from every direction he looked.

"Are the Weasley's going to meet you here Harry?" the voice of his best friend brought him back from his silent observation. Harry nodded his head absently as he looked away form the scene of yet another family disappearing into thin air.

"Ron said that we will be taking a portkey to the Burrow from the platform itself. Where are your parents by the way?" he asked the taller girl.

"On the other side, I asked them to wait there." Hermione answered quietly, and he understood the reason for her action very well. He heaved the trunk off the ground and motioned for her best friend with his free hand.

"Well lets get going then, we do not want to keep them waiting do we?" he said, making her look at him in surprise.

"But what about the Weasley's Harry?"

"They can wait for a few minutes Mione, besides I haven't met your parents in a long while." Harry answered vaguely.

It was only partially true as he also wanted to get out of the oppressive environment that seemed to hang in the very air for at least a short while. She looked opened her mouth, no doubt to protest, before she stopped herself noticing his blank face and the slight strain in his voice. With one last look around the platform, the bushy haired sixth year nodded her head and started walking towards the barrier that separated the two worlds. Harry heaved a silent sigh of relief and followed the bushy haired girl.

The pair transferred both of their trunks to a trolley on their way, which he started pushing towards the portal leading to the muggle section of the King's Cross with Hermione walking besides him. It became very apparent as they neared the portal that an Auror was standing besides it, directing the flow of traffic to the other side. The pair waited for a few minutes in the long line before they were motioned to cross the barrier, which they did in an almost run. They immediately moved away from the barrier separating platforms nine and ten of the station to avoid any collisions.

The muggle side of the King's Cross looked same as ever, with people moving between the vending stations and the number of trains waiting to be boarded on their tracks in a rush. But his sharp eyes didn't miss the increased number of policemen spread among the general population, patrolling the large station. Still, the absence of the oppressive atmosphere that had been teeming in the magical side made him feel relatively better. He ran his a hand through his hair before joining his friend in the search for her parents, whom he remembered from their meetings in the past years.

"There they are Harry." Hermione exclaimed in an excited voice before taking off in the direction she had just pointed out to him. Harry smiled softly as he pushed the trolley after the sprinting girl at a more sedate pace, watching in amusement as the normally composed girl throw herself at the middle aged woman, hugging and being hugged in return in a bone crushing manner.

"Hello Harry, I hope you are well?" the smooth voice shifted his attention towards the final member of the Granger family standing besides his family, and he offered the man a polite nod of his head.

Daniel Granger was a tall, lean man with straight brown hair hair and sharp brown eyes that shined with intelligence, something he seemed to pass on to his daughter. He was dressed in a pair of plain black slacks, cream colored polo's, dark blue jumper and a heavy winter coat.

"I'm fine Mr. Granger." Harry said, shaking the hand the oral surgeon had offered. Mother and daughter had finished their reunion by the time he had released Mr. Granger's hand, and he was pulled into a short, warm hug by Emma Granger eerily similar to her daughter's, as the said girl watched on with a large smile.

"Harry, its good to see you again." she stated once she let go of him and moved to stand next to her daughter with her arm wrapped around her daughter's shoulders. It still surprised him that how much they looked alike, especially as there were now, standing side by side while wearing identical grins. The only differences being the elder Granger looking more mature due to her age, her gray eyes and the ebony black hair that was just as bushy as her daughter's.

"It's good to see you too Mrs. Granger, how goes the practice?" he asked returning the smile.

"Busy as ever Harry. It was a relief to close it down for Christmas holidays to tell the truth, with the amount of children we seem to be getting lately. So, how have you been?" Mrs. Granger inquired as her husband transferred Hermione's trunk to another trolley.

"I have been well." he said easily, "Especially with Hermione mothering me half the time at school.". The comment elicited a look of amusement and one of mock anger from the Granger women.

"You should have seen her when I got sick with pneumonia when she was nine, she absolutely refused to move from my side even for the school." she said fondly, making the shorter girl blush.

"I don't doubt that very much Mrs. Granger." he said remembering the hours Hermione had spent with him whenever he had been in the hospital wing.

"When would your family be getting here Harry?" Mr. Granger asked looking around, almost making him choke.

"They wouldn't be getting here Mr. Granger, I would be spending the holidays with the Weasleys." he answered shrugging slightly. It was very apparent from the confused looks on their faces that Hermione had not mentioned the conditions of his home to them, something he was very grateful for.

"Oh, and where are they?" Emma Granger asked, looking around.

"I will be meeting them in the nine and three quarters actually, just came here to see Hermione off and wish you guys happy holidays." he said. Mrs. Granger opened her mouth to speak when a loud voice rang across the platform, grabbing the attention of many and stopping any words leaving her mouth.

"There you are Harry." the male voice came as a loud yell, relief coloring it. The four immediately looked in the direction of the voice with the two teen's hand reaching for their wand instinctively.

His sharp eyes immediately recognized the forms of Arthur Weasley, whom the voice belonged to, along with Mrs. Weasley, Ron, Ginny, Tonks and Shacklebolt making their way towards them with revealed expressions on their face. Harry's smile died fully along with his confusion as he noticed the unusually grim looks that accompanied the relief, and dread filled his heart as he braced himself to hear the reason for their said looks.

Mrs. Weasley pulled him into one of her bone crushing hugs as soon as the six came to stop in front of them. He didn't miss the fact that the hug lasted far a little longer than usual, though it helped him calm his emotions a bit.

"Why didn't you wait for us in the platform Harry?" Ron asked with a frown.

"I wanted to see Hermione off." he said never taking his eyes of the magical adults.

"Oh."

"What happened?" Harry asked no one in particular when no one made any move to speak. The six exchanged a look amongst themselves before Mr. Weasley cleared his throat as he took a step forward.

"There has been an incident Harry, a group of Death Eaters tried to breach the wards surrounding your relatives home earlier today. If it was not for the additional wards that Dumbledore had erected after his resurrection, they would have succeeded breaching it too."

Harry felt Hermione come stand besides him and take his hand in her own, and he squeezed it gently to show her appreciation for her support. He may not like his relatives and he would definitely be thrilled at the prospect of not seeing them ever again for the rest of his life, but he never wished them any harm in his life. The Weasley patriarch seemed to read his thoughts as the words that left his mouth proved.

"Nothing happened to them Harry, they were not even aware of the attempt." the statement helped him relax a bit, though a slight amount of confusion filled his mind. If the Dursley's were not harmed, then what was the reason for their grim facade.

"And..." he dragged, looking at them with narrowed eyes as the six squirmed under his gaze.

"Headmaster Dumbledore thought it would be prudent for you to spend your holidays with the Dursley's in their home, to strengthen the wards." Mr. Weasley said cautiously.

Hermione gasped softly, whether from the shock of hearing the news or due to the fact that Harry's grip on her hand had turned crushing for an instant. He released it unconsciously as he took a step back, much to bushy haired girl's displeasure, but Harry was far too busy digesting the news delivered by the balding man's to pay any attention.

"Spend my holidays with the my relatives?" he said slowly, voice completely devoid of any emotions.

His friends winched as one as they watched the myriad of emotions that had been present on his features drain away with each passing second until he resembled a finely carved marble statue than anything human. Hermione more so than the two Weasley siblings, as she alone was aware of recent changes in the chosen one's rather emotions as a result of his bizarre encounter. It would be a disaster if her friend lost his temper and performed accidental magic as a result in the middle of the muggle world, the ministry would eat him alive.

Everyone of the magical adults exchanged one look amongst themselves before they moved their hands to the wand hidden under their cloaks, in preparation to cast the calming or silencing spells that would no doubt be needed any moment. They once again cursed their luck for not catching up with the raven haired teenager before he crossed the magical barrier.

Which was the reason that all them who had experienced the famous Potter temper dropped their mouth open, unable to comprehend the single word that left the chosen one's mouth.

"Alright." Harry had said with a shrug of his shoulders.

The boy-who-lived was very much aware of the reason for their gobsmacked expressions, knowing his temper better than anyone else. They would have been spot on in their assumptions too, if he had heard the news the previous evening or if his encounter with the vampire never took place. But his clearer mind and the absence of any influence the mental link with Voldemort had on his emotions prevented him from exploding in the middle of the busy station the instance he heard the news.

He accepted the fact, at least to himself, that the first action that popped into his mind after Mr. Weasley had stopped speaking was to yell 'Are you out of your mind' at the top of his lungs. And that thought was crushed ruthlessly by the more logical part of him that he hadn't used much in the past, analyzed his current situation and listed the pros and cons of it. The cons being that he had to put up with his relatives for whole two weeks, miss spending the Christmas with his surrogate family and unable to put his newly made plan of practicing his magic during the holidays.

But he believed that the pros outweighed the cons by a considerable amount. One, he would most probably left alone to his own devices for the span of the two weeks, which would be ideal considering the fact that his instincts told him that the changes he had been experiencing was not over by a long shot. He wasn't ready for anyone else to find about the rather strange situation he had found himself in, which Mrs. Weasley would have done before the end of the first day at the Burrow. And he definitely didn't want them anywhere near him if things got out of hand after all changes cannot always be good. Besides his instincts, which had no doubt been affected by the encounter were screaming at him to do all he can to protect his relatives, something that confused him to no end.

"But under one condition." Harry stated, breaking them out of their shocked state that he was responsible for. It took them all a moment to realize what he had just said, which resulted in them looking more nervous and wary.

"Which is?" Tonks asked with a narrowed eyes.

"I want to go to the Gringotts first."

"Impossible." exclaimed the female Auror, while the rest of the adults nodded their consent.

"Then I'm afraid that we are at an impasse." Harry said folding his arms over his chest.

"Why do you want to visit the Gringotts dear?" asked Mrs. Weasley, after few seconds of silence.

"I need to draw some galleons and have them converted into pounds if I were to survive my stay with my relatives, and I have to check on my finances." he answered, leaving out the business of the family trees out.

"But we could have Bill do that for you?" suggested the plump woman, looking hopeful. Harry shook his head stubbornly.

"I'm sorry Mrs. Weasley, but it is something I have to do myself." he stated with a determined look on his face. The group continued to stare at each other with Hermione's parents looking more than a little confused before Mr. Weasley let out a sigh of defeat.

"Alright but you have to get out at the first sign of trouble and wear that cloak of yours until you enter the bank." he said firmly. Harry nodded his head with a large smile.

"Of course Mr. Weasley."

Harry turned towards Hermione and shrugged slightly.

"Well I guess this is it. I will see you on January Mione." he said and was promptly pulled into a tight hug.

"Take care Harry, and try not to blow up the Dursley's." she whispered in his ears.

"I will try but no promises." he whispered back before unwrapping his arms around her.

"Enjoy your holidays Harry." Mrs. Granger said offering her own hug and Mr. Granger shook his hand politely.

"Merry Christmas Harry." the brown haired man said.

"You too Mr. Granger." he returned. The family offered him one last smile before walking towards the exit of the large train station.

"Call me if you need anything." Hermione yelled looking over shoulders. Harry smiled slightly.

"I will." he yelled right back and watched as the trio disappear among the crowds.

Harry looked on for a moment longer before turning his head slightly to look at the others still with him.

"So, who's going to take me to Gringotts.".

Ginny and Tonks let out snorts of amusement simultaneously, earning a stern look from Mrs. Weasley.

"Kingsley and Tonks will be escorting you to the bank and then to your relatives house, and remember no detours on the way." Mr. Weasley stated before handing him a silver chain with a pendent in the shape of a phoenix. "Wear this all the time, its a portkey to the Headquarters in the event of some mishap.".

Harry pulled the chain over his head and tucked it under his shirt.

"Of course Mr. Weasley, can we get going now.".

The eldest Weasley nodded his head before leading the group back towards the barrier that concealed the platform nine and three quarters. Once they were inside, the man waved his wand over Harry's trunk still in its trolley banishing it to, as he guessed, to his room at No.4 Private Drive.

"I will inform Albus about the detour and be sure to find Bill at the bank, he will help make the transactions a lot quicker." Mr. Weasley addressed the two Aurors.

"We will Arthur." said Shacklebolt in his booming voice.

"Take care dear and don't forget to write. We will pick you up for your return next term at your relatives house." Mrs. Weasley said after pulling him into another one of her patented hugs. Ginny offered a tentative hug of her own, mumbling a good bye before stepping back so that her brother could say his farewells.

The lanky redhead looked at him with a nervous smile.

"Guess I will see you later." he said finally. Harry nodded his head once before slapping his friend on his back.

"See you later Ron.".

Mr. Weasley then removed a piece of rope from his robes and signaled his family to gather around his form, which they did immediately before laying a finger on the portkey. With one last nod to the boy-who-lived, the family of redheads disappeared from the magical platform.

"How are we going to the Diagon Alley again?" he asked looking at the remaining members of the Order.

"Sidealong apparation Harry." said Tonks cheerfully before apparating away, making him let out a loud groan.

"I hate those more than the portkeys." he complained taking the hand Shacklebolt had offered in a firm grip.

"It gets better when you do it on your own." the dark skinned man stated before he apparated them both from the platform.

Harry once again felt the sensation of being stuffed through a straw, though it was more pronounced and lasted a little longer than his apparation with his Headmaster. When it finally stopped, he bent over gasping for breath while trying to keep himself from cursing the man standing besides him, as his temper demanded.

"Are you alright Harry?" Tonks asked, looking worried.

"I'm fine Tonks, this is only my second time apparating and it's worse than the first." he answered as Shacklebolt stowed his wand inside his sleeve. It was only then that he took in his surroundings, which he immediately recognized as the back of the Leaky Cauldron, where the entrance to the magical shopping district was located.

Tonks waved her wand over Harry's form once upon Shacklebolt's nod before speaking.

"Silencing charms, now put on your cloak Harry and be sure that you stay between us until we enter the bank.".

Harry did as instructed and watched on invisible as Tonks tapped her wand on the worn, red bricks in the particular order required to open the portal. When the arch was fully formed, the trio started making their way towards the imposing, marble building that made up the only bank in the wizarding world.

The once busy and colorful district was completely deserted with most of the shops closed or boarded up, with posters of Death Eaters adorning their windows and walls. He didn't miss the fact that the twins shop was among those that was closed for the day and he was pretty sure that he know the reason for that. From the glaces he got through the windows, he saw that the shops that was till open had no one besides their proprietors in them. Everywhere he looked, he saw the damages that Voldemort was unleashing on the world almost everyday with the authorities unable to do anything to do about it.

'He had to be stopped and I'm the only one capable of doing it. Merlin help us all.'

He thought releasing a huge sigh concealed by the silencing charm as the trio climbed the bone white steps of the goblin run bank. Shacklebolt came to a stop in front of the two guards and bent over to whisper something that Harry couldn't hear. Both the goblins looked where he stood before they discussed amongst themselves in rapid Gobbledegook that none of them could even hope to understand. After almost fifteen seconds, they seemed to come to a decision as one of the goblins stepped forwards while the other said while motion towards his partners.

"Ironknuckle will take you to the private meeting room.".

With nervous excitement coursing through his veins, Harry followed the goblin through the large silver doors of the magical bank with the two Aurors flanking his side.

**A.N: Sorry for the delay guys, had my hands full for the past week. Enjoy the chapter and please review.**


	7. Chapter 7

** I AM WOLF**

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Harry Potter or the Twilight Saga.

**Christmas Holiday's.**

_Thud. Thud, thud. Thud._

"When are you leaving for your school?" the taller teen asked as he pounded the large punching bag with several layers of tape wrapped around it, his light blue eyes narrowed in concentration.

_Thud. Thud, thud. Thud._

"In a couple of days." answered the raven haired boy, who stood a couple of inches shorter than the other teen. He had his torso pressed up against the punching bag with both his arms holding it in place in an iron grip, not visibly bothered by the heavy blows his cousin was raining upon the bag. Both the teens were dressed in baggy shorts and tank tops which were soaked with sweat from all their work out, their breathing deep and heavy.

"And your folks are coming here to get you?" the heavily muscled teen asked signaling it was the other's turn at beating up the inanimate object. The raven haired teenager waited for his cousin to hold the bag down before starting to beat the shite out of it.

_Thud, thud. THUD. Thud, thud._

The shorter teen threw in a kick for every pair of punches, alternating the legs for every the alternative kicks and the other looked somewhat strained to hold the bag down.

"Harry?" the stocky teen queried, his voice slightly shaky for some reason.

"Yes." Harry replied between the punches.

"Can I ask you a question?"

"Of course you can Dud."

His cousin paused for a few seconds before speaking again.

"Is it normal?"

"Mind elaborating that a bit for me Dudley?" the chosen one questioned after a particularly hard kick.

"Growing up four inches in two weeks among other things, is it normal among your folks? I mean does your kind undergo flash puberty or something."

Harry remained silent for almost a minute, though the intensity of his punches and kicks were noticeably harder.

"No Dud, it is not." he finally stated.

"Oh." Dudley Dursley said looking surprised.

Harry concentrated on the bag as he breathed out with every one of his punch and kick, forcibly keeping his eyes off his cousin.

"Do you know why it is happening to you then?" his cousin asked again after few minutes.

The shorter boy stopped and looked at the blonde, confusion and irritation clouding his features.

"Why are you asking these questions Dudley, did your parents put you up to it?" the wariness he felt clear in his tone. The other teen raised his hands in a placating gesture to calm the last Potter before opening his mouth to speak.

"No they didn't, I was just worried about you Harry with all the strange things that's happening to you lately. I mean come on, you are forty pounds lighter than me and your punches are still harder than mine." Dudley answered nervously, shocking him slightly.

He looked at his cousin with narrowed eyes for a long moment before offering a small smile as he motioned for the blonde to resume his position.

"I'm really fine Dud, don't worry yourself. And no, I don't know why it's happening to me though my friend and I are still researching the reason behind the changes." Harry answered before getting back to beating the battered bag.

The routine continued on for the next fifteen minutes before the chosen one stopped with one last high powered kick that actually pushed his partner back a couple of steps. The pair then proceeded to remove their gloves and perform a variety of stretches, warming down from their hour long workout. Ten minutes later they both grabbed a pair of towels that were hanging from one of the weight machines sitting on the floor of the large basement.

"Coming up Harry?" he asked after wiping down the sweat from his face, neck, arms and chest.

"Not yet, I still have to do my daily dose of meditation Dudley." Harry answered throwing away the towel he used to wipe away the fruits of the long workout.

"See you later then." the blonde said before walking towards the stairs.

The boy-who-lived watched his cousin's large frame disappear behind the ivory colored door before letting out a sigh. Almost two weeks had passed since his return to his relative's house and he still couldn't believe the change that had taken place in his cousin Dudley Dursley. The seventeen year old had lost a lot of weight from the last time he had seen the teen when he had left for the Burrow and the blonde no longer looked like a baby whale and he had not even recognized him when he had first laid eyes on the teen on the doorway of the No. 4, Private Drive. Then there was the fact that the boy had apologized for all the years he had spent torturing him with his friends, an apology that all his senses screamed was very genuine and heartfelt in nature.

And he still couldn't believe that the older teen had invited him to his morning exercise sessions the same evening he had gotten home, a request that he had accepted readily as he thought that it would help him control his emotions better, which turned out to be true after few of the said sessions.

If anyone had said that he and his cousin would be spending hours each other without trading any insults or Harry getting beat up by the larger boy, he would have recommended a therapist or a mind healer. But here he was, spending an hour every day since his return exercising and sparring with his cousin, and he had to agree that it helped him in more than one ways.

'And all it took was me saving him from the Dementors.' Harry thought as he sat down Indian style on the sparring mat and closed his eyes to begin his meditation thus practicing his Occlumency.

Two hours of meditation for the past two weeks made it possible for his body to relax completely and his breathing to turn deep and regular in just a few seconds time. Not long after which he was sucked into the world that was the representation of his mind.

The sensation of falling down didn't last as long as his first few visits and that wasn't the only change when it came to the realm of his mind. The pure white room where he landed after the short fall had undergone a large number of changes since his very first and very short visit back at Hogwarts. There was a large window bared by iron bars on one of the walls that offered an excellent view of the world that existed outside the room, and it had shocked him to a great extent when he first laid his eyes on it a week into the holidays.

Then there was all the furniture that littered around the small room which consisted of a leather couch, a smooth oak table, a cushioned armchair, and finally a large book case that consisted of dozens of volumes which contained all of his semantic memories. On one of the walls hung a huge portrait, whose canvas was entirely white in color with hazy black outlines of something large and imposing. When it had first appeared in his mindscape the portrait was plain white and empty, the hazy picture appeared on his next visit and it had became more discernible with each passing days.

Finally on the last remaining wall was a vague outline of a door that had appeared on the same day as the painting. And from the outlines, he could tell that it would be a grand looking one once it had fully formed, which he guessed would take another month and a half.

'And I very much hope so.'

Harry couldn't wait for the door to appear as he was very much excited to get into the world that existed outside the small room which was visible through the only window in the room. A place that seemed vaguely familiar to him for some bizarre reason which he was yet to find out.

After taking in all the changes that had taken place since his last visit the previous day, he walked towards the portrait and laid both his palms on the center of the picture. He felt the same overwhelming feeling of power coursing through it that he had felt on the wall during his first visit, incidentally the same wall upon which the portrait now hung upon. But unlike that time it didn't shock or surprise him in the least, he just kept his palms on the portrait with his eyes closed and let it flow through the portrait and through him.

It had taken him sometime to get used to this overwhelming feeling flowing through his body. And though he only did what he was doing to analyze and understand the said feeling, he had to admit that a part of him found it a bit addicting to have all that power coursing through his being. It did scare him a little when he thought about how much he had gotten used to the feeling, and he suspected that he may have gotten addicted to it.

Harry spent what felt like a lifetime in the same position as every one of his every visit, watching the portrait with hazy eyes as he concentrated on the feeling that was being transmitted through the portrait. When he finally removed his hands, he let out a small sigh of frustration that echoed throughout the room as he felt the feeling drain away from his body which made him feel strangely vulnerable.

After one last look at the portrait he moved towards the table at the other end of the room, and littered on it were dozens of papers containing everything that he had read the previous day and he started arranging until he had a neat stack. He then placed his right hand on the stack and watched as it slowly transformed into a medium sized book bound in deep green leather with the title 'Advanced Curses and their Counters.', the book he had completed yesterday. Standing up, Harry walked to the bookcase and placed the newly formed book in an empty spot.

'One more book full of spells added to my arsenal.' he thought gazing at the large book case containing over fifty volumes on various branches of magic.

After spending some more time starring at the book case, he moved towards the window which offered him a view of the world that surrounded the small room. A world that was filled with towering pines, bright green moss and rich brown soil upon which laid the yellow leaves fallen from the trees. His sharp eyes picked out a number of strange birds flying around and resting on some of the branches of the trees in the forest, birds that glowed with a light blue color the reason for which he couldn't begin to fathom. Then there was the strange vines that could be found wrapped around some of the trees.

The fresh air breezed from the forest and through the window, caressing his face and refreshing his being thoroughly as it did since the day the window had first appeared. And as always it didn't take him long to get lost in the peacefulness of the moment.

When Harry finally came back to himself he made his way towards the outline of the door on the nearby wall, where he ran his hand over it feeling nothing but a slight sense of anticipation that he always felt which had nothing to do with the said wall. Letting out a sigh of disappointment. With another sigh, he closed his eyes and opened them again upon which he found himself back in the physical world.

'Better start moving Potter, before you're overwhelmed by the odor coming from your body and get knocked out by the stink.' he thought as he stood up from the mat. His mind drew up plans for the present day as he took the stairs two at a time to the ground floor of the house.

'Well after I had taken a shower first.'

"-re Duddy dear, have some more. You need to eat after all those exercises you have been doing lately." his aunt's voice came from the dining room and he could almost see his cousin roll his eyes in exasperation.

Just as he was moving towards the stairs leading to the first floor his uncle came out of the dining room holding his briefcase and the keys to his car in his hands. The man who looked remarkably like a walrus paused for a few seconds as soon as his eyes fell upon his nephew walking towards the stairs a look of fear crossing his flushed face, before he hurried away to the main door and disappeared behind it. Harry couldn't stop himself from rolling his eyes at his uncle's action as made his way up the stairs and to his room to get a change of clothes for the shower.

Twenty minutes later, a freshly showered Harry Potter stood in front of the large mirror that hung in the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist, taking in the changes that were wrought upon his body in two week's that had passed since his encounter with the vampire. And he was very much aware that it was impossible to conceal the said changes from anyone that had ever laid eyes on him before the beginning of the Christmas holidays.

No longer was he a scrawny midget who had to look up at all his classmates to even meet their eyes. The boy who lived now stood at the height of five feet eight inches and his body had been filled out enough that he was no longer skin and bones, his muscles had become more toned and powerful. But thinking back it almost made sense due to the sheer amount of food he had been consuming since his potions professor's Christmas party.

'How in the name of Merlin am I going to explain this to everyone?'

And that wasn't the only changes the encounter wrought upon his body. The numerous scars that he had picked up over the years had disappeared without a trace, including the infamous lightning bolt on his forehead and the ones he had gotten from his encounter from the Basilisk and the Hungarian Horntail. Then there was the increased physical strength that made it possible for him to go toe to toe with his cousin in the ring, who was far larger than him. Not to mention the increased stamina and decrease in the amount of sleep he needed each night for his body to recoup.

Last but not least, he no longer needed his glasses and his eye sight was sharper than ever.

'Well at least I can be sure that Hermione won't freak out upon seeing me. Much.' he thought as he dressed in his hand me down clothes that fit better than ever and stepped out of the bathroom before walking towards his bedroom.

As soon as he had opened the door to his room, his eyes fell upon the unexpected guest resting on Hedwig's perch. He let out a sigh of relief that his faithful owl was out hunting or the large Eagle owl would have been severely harmed for stealing her perch. Walking over the floor that was littered with scraps of parchments, chocolate wrappers, books on various magical topics, and old quidditch magazines, he stopped in front of the owl and offered it a bowl of water and some owl treats. Said owl offered him a feeble hoot of thanks before starting to gulp down water from the bowl. Only then did he turn his attention to the item obviously delivered by the owl which was wearing the Gringotts crest on its breast.

The tube was over fifteen inches in length and was made up of what appeared to be solid silver and carved upon it were a series of runes that he had no hope of understanding. He felt a tingle run up his arm as he picked it up and he heard a small click signaling that the magic imbedded in the tube had recognized him as the intended recipient.

'Seems Hermione is right once again, the goblins did take the matter of the family trees quite seriously.' he thought recognizing some of the magic used to protect the tube.

After thoroughly examining the object in his hands, he twisted open one end of the tube and placed the cap on his table before pulling out the roll of parchment housed in it. His fingers tingled slightly as he rolled the parchment between them as he moved to sit on his bed, excitement thrumming through his body.

This piece of parchment may contain the answer for everything strange that had been happening in his life and it contained a piece of his family history.

Unrolling the parchment while holding his breath, he couldn't help think about his visit to the premier bank in the magical world before his return to his relative's house.

_**FLASHBACK:**_

The goblin led Shacklebolt, Tonks and the invisible Harry to one of the managers sitting behind a medium sized desk who was writing in a large ledger with a quill made from what he guessed to be an eagle feather. As the two goblins conversed in their language that consisted of lot of growls, Harry took the opportunity to read the name plate resting on the table which read 'Manager Blacknife' in solid gold letters.

"Follow me please." the accented voice of the goblin brought his attention back from his examination and he followed the two Aurors who were in turn led by the goblin dressed in a pair of expensive looking tunic and pants.

Harry spent most of the journey observing the corridors that they walked through, corridors he had never seen before during his previous visits to the wizarding bank. After almost fifteen minutes of walking they stopped in a corridor filled with rooms guarded by identical iron doors decorated with semi-precious jewels and their guide led the trio to one of them. Shacklebolt and Tonks took stand on either side of the door before they nodded to the goblin who led the still invisible Harry inside what he guessed to be a conference room. He removed the invisibility cloak as soon as the door closed behind the pair and he draped it over one of the chairs standing besides the long conference table before seating himself in it.

"What can I do for you today Mr. Potter?" Blacknife asked taking his own seat at a chair opposite to his.

"I need information on all my accounts, both Potter and Black to begin with." he answered.

The swarthy looking goblin nodded his head before removing a conical object from his tunic that was covered in minute runes and he spoke into it in gobbledygook for a few seconds.

"They will be here in a moment Mr. Potter," Blacknife said placing the object on the table "Anything else?"

"I have read that Gringotts can help getting emancipated and wavier for underage magic?" Harry queried.

"Indeed we can Mr. Potter, though it is applicable only to the last surviving members of Noble houses, which wouldn't be a problem for you considering that you are the heir apparent for Potter and Black titles. But it would take at least a month for the process to complete." he explained.

"That's not a problem Manager Blacknife. Oh, and I would like to have my family tree to be drawn and I heard that Gringotts can help me with that."

"You heard right indeed Mr. Potter but I should warn you, constructing one's family tree is a very expensive process." the goblin warned.

"Cost doesn't matter Manager, just make sure that it goes back at least ten generations on both my parents' side." he stated.

Blacknife nodded his head and made some notes in a piece of parchment.

"It would cost you five hundred galleons and would take over a week."

The silence that lasted after the statement was broken by the door to the room being opened by another goblin with a large file in his hand, a file which he offered to his superior before scurrying away without even glancing at the boy-who-lived. Blacknife waited until the door closed shut behind the other goblin before placing the file in front of the boy-who-lived.

Harry took a deep breath before opening it and started to read its contents. The parchment at the top were a detailed report on the Potter account, which by itself had enough wealth for him to live on luxuriously for the rest of his natural life. He learned that the Potters were a 'Noble' house which meant that they were around for at least six centuries and they had done some extraordinary services for the crown before the imposition of the Statue of Secrecy over two hundred years ago.

There was information in the file indicating that most of the wealth was inherited from the extinction of an Ancient house who married into the Potters over four centuries ago. But most of the Potter's liked to earn their own money as warders, hit-wizards, aurors and quidditch players and they had all added something to the inherited fortune. And all of the said wealth was in the form of liquid assets, the only property being the cottage in the Godric's Hollow which was declared a national monument after the events of the Halloween all those years ago. Though there was a note about the destruction of the Potter Manor by Lord Voldemort during which his grandparents were killed and his father selling the piece of land before going into hiding.

The Black account on the other hand had enough money for at least ten generations of his descendents to live on the life of the royalty without having to work a single day. From the file he understood that the Black's were one of the 'Ancient and Noble House' which meant that they had existed for over millennia and they had done services to the crown. The primary sources of Black's wealth were the half a dozen gold and diamond mines that ran dry almost three centuries ago. Unlike the Potter account only half of the said wealth was in the form of galleons and precious stones while the other half was in the form of a large number of properties around the Great Britain, including the Diagon and Knockturn alleys, and shares in number of companies in the wizarding world like the Daily Prophet, Nimbus brooms, etc. And these properties and shares happened to earn him a steady income every month, adding more gold to the Black account.

It took him a few minutes to digest the fact that he was one of the richest wizards in the magical world, money that he had inherited form the death of his loved ones. And he would have exchanged every sickle of the wealth for a mere hour with his parents and godfather. His clearer mind didn't let him brood long as it reasoned that there was no use crying over spilt milk and to use it on something useful and productive, especially considering the situation in the wizarding world.

"Do you have any questions on your accounts Mr. Potter?" Blacknife addressed him as soon as he had closed the file.

"No, these all seems in order. But I couldn't help but notice that all of my money is just sitting in the vaults, gathering dust. Is there any investment options available in the wizarding and muggle worlds?"

The smile that graced the face of the goblin sitting in front of him was more than feral in its nature before he started explaining all the available investment options at the Gringotts.

An hour later Harry exited the room having signed a number of parchments for his emancipation and the contracts for investing thirty percent of the money in the Potter and Black account, following Blacknife while wearing his invisibility cloak with a wad of cash in his pocket. The goblin gave a nod to the pair of Aurors before leading the trio to the main hall of the bank.

_**FLASHBACK:**_

Harry unrolled the large parchment slowly, taking in all the words the action uncovered. Written at the top of the parchment in regal script was 'Family Tree of Harry James Potter' and following it was his full name. Branching from it was the full name of his parents and branching from them were the name of their own parents and so on. The list went on for over twelve generations and Harry absorbed every name on the parchment until he was absolutely sure that each one of them was burned in his mind.

There were over six hundred names in the parchment but it didn't take him more than a few seconds to identify the most likely suspect from whom he must have inherited his aversion to the vampires. During the holidays he had a slight suspicion that it must've been someone from his mother's side who had passed on whatever was responsible for the changes he was experiencing. After all, the Potter's line lived exclusively in the magical world and it would have been almost impossible for them to not encounter with a vampire, which meant that there would have been some kind of record of events similar to his. And it certainly helped that the person's name was the first one to be of Native American origin.

Minowa Evans, daughter of Rozene and Cheveyo and wife of one Michael Evans. She also happened to be the grandmother of his mother and aunt. Finally after two whole weeks he had a name that could lead him towards the answer to his mysterious condition.

'Better call Hermione now Potter, as you promised her you would unless of course you want to be on the receiving end of her wand.' he thought as he rolled up the parchment and returned it to the silver tube before securing it in his school trunk.

A minute later he was standing in the living room, the telephone receiver pressed to his ear as he listened to the 'ring ring' of his friend's phone on the other end.

"Granger residence." the extremely familiar voice of his best friend came from the speaker pressed to his ear.

"Hello Mione, how are you doing on this wonderful day?" he asked feeling glad to speak to the best friend for several reasons.

"Harry! It so good to hear from you, and I'm great. Are you alright, did something happen to you and have you complete all your assignments for the holidays?"

Harry had to suppress a snort at the very Hermoione-ish questions before answering them.

"I'm fine and no nothing note worthy happened and yes I've completed my assignments last week Mione. Anyway I called to tell that I received my family tree from the Gringotts today and I'm pretty sure that I know from who I got my condition from."

"Really that's great, but how can you be so sure of that Harry?" she questioned curiously.

"Promise me that you won't laugh at me?" he asked trying to sound stern. There was a moment of silence before she spoke.

"I promise, now tell me how you found the person."

"Her name is the first one of Native American origin and her parents had no last name. Besides my gut tells me she is the one." Harry explained to his friends.

"Well, your gut had never steered you before when you actually stopped to listen to it. So who is she anyway?" the bushy haired friend asked after digesting the information.

"My great grandmother on my mother's side." he answered.

"Hmmm, that explains why I haven't read of your condition before, with your mother being the first magical from the Evans's and all. And be sure that you inquire your aunt about her, she may have some valuable information that may help us in our research." she ordered him.

"Inquire my aunt, right. I could tell that the conversation won't be a pleasant one, but I will ask her anyway. So have you packed up for the new term?" he asked the last bit with humor obvious in his tone.

"Very funny Potter. I will see you at the station and don't forget to bring the family tree with you for the school." Hermione stated.

"I will, take care Mione."

"You too, goodbye Harry."

"Goodbye Mione." he said before hanging the phone up.

'How in the name of Merlin am I going to talk to Aunt Petunia about her grandmother?' he thought, starring at one of the pictures of the three Dursley's that hung upon the wall.

Shaking his head, he moved to the kitchen to satiate his starving stomach. He noticed the note attached to the refrigerator with the help of a magnet when he stopped before it for some eggs and bacon for his breakfast.

_Harry, _

_ Mom and I have gone to get some things for my new term and we won't be back before evening. Mom said you can help yourself to anything you can find in the fridge, see you in the evening._

_-Dudley._

'At least I will have time to plan for my talk with Aunt Petunia.'

The though ran through his mind as he removed half a dozen eggs and more bacon than his uncle would consume in a day before moving towards the stove, thinking over the reaction his relatives had when they learned that Harry would be spending the Christmas with them.

_**FLASHBACK:**_

"I hate apperating." Harry grumbled unhappily as soon as he and escorts appeared in front No. 4, Private drive along with his escort.

"You already said that Harry." said Tonks in an amused tone standing besides Kingsley Shacklebolt, who was in the process of removing the disillusionment and notice-me-not charms from their person.

"And it is the truth." the boy-who-lived mumbled before looking at the door of his relative's house in wariness. When the two Aurors made no move to knock the door, he stepped forwards with a small scowl and did it himself. It felt like a lifetime had passed as they waited before the door finally opened by a blonde haired teen who looked extremely surprised at seeing them for some reason.

"Harry?" the boy questioned in a voice that was very familiar to him.

"Dudley?" he asked finally recognizing who he was, flabbergasted at the changes that his cousin had undergone since the last time they had seen each other over four months ago.

Dudley had lost a lot of weight so that he no longer resembled a baby whale and the air of arrogance that always seemed to be surrounding him was also absent. With the change the teen had made in his clothing and his extremely short hair cut made him totally unrecognizable to the boy-who-lived until he spoke of course. The two would have stood starring at each other at the door way of the house, with their mouth wide open if it was not for action of one Nymphadora Tonks.

"Can we go inside now boys, it bloody freezing out here?" Tonks said in slight annoyance.

"Sorry, please come inside." Dudley said surprising him further due to the lack of fear or disgust which he usually showed when faced with people from the magical world. The trio stepped inside the house and followed the blonde who led them in the direction of the living room.

"Who is it dear?" the slightly shrill voice of his aunt came from the said room making him feel nervous about the confrontation they would be having in moments.

And he was not disappointed.

"YOU!" boomed Vernon Dursley as soon as Harry stepped into the living room, shocking the two Aurors into drawing their wands.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE BOY?" the man yelled again before, not giving him a chance to speak.

Harry motioned for his companions to lower their wands before he stepped forward and opening his mouth to speak. But his uncle beat him to it once again.

"OUT, GET OUT NOW! I WILL NOT HAVE YOU RUINING MY FAMILIES CHRISTMAS BOY!"

"Please let me explain Uncle Vernon?" he said quenching his anger that the man's action had evoked.

"I DON'T WANT TO HEAR ANY OF THE COCK AND BULL STORIES THAT YOU MAKE UP, NOW GET OUT OF MY HOME!" the man roared at the top of his voice, his face turning the color of old porridge.

"Uncle Ver-"

"GET OUT BEFORE I CALL THE-"his uncles rant was cut off suddenly and though the man's mouth continued to move, no sound came from him. A look over his shoulder revealed the cause for the strange event as one Nymphadora Tonks, from the overly innocent look on her face.

"What, he was not allowing you to explain the situation, and he was getting on my nerves." She mumbled the last part but he still heard her.

Harry gave her a stern look before turning towards his uncle who was looking scared while clutching his throat while his aunt fussed over him. The bony faced woman looked at him with anger etched on his face.

"What did she do to Vernon?" she shrieked loudly.

"Nothing harmful Aunt Petunia, but I won't let him have his voice until he accepts to listen to my explanation first." he stated in a tone that suggested that he would take 'no' for the answer.

After almost a minute of silent starring contest, the large man nodded his head with purple colored face and Tonks lifted the spell immediately.

"I need to spend my Christmas holidays here to recharge the blood wards." Harry said simply, eliciting looks of puzzlement from his uncle and cousin.

"What in the God's name are the blood wards?" Vernon Dursley asked in a shaky voice.

"They are a type of magic that protects your home from You-Know-Who and the Death Eaters, the strongest kind that exists." Tonks answered before Harry could open his mouth.

"Thank you for that Tonks." he said, sarcasm thick in his tone.

"But weren't they supposed to be recharged from you stay here during the summer vacation." Petunia Dursley surprised them with her statement.

"How do you know about that?" he questioned with narrowed eyes, ignoring the shocked look on his uncle's face.

"From the letter that he old man had written." she answered shrugging her shoulders "Now answer my question."

The trio of magical exchanged a look before Kingsley nodded his head indicating that he would handle the situation.

"There was a situation last night that drained them almost completely and the headmaster predicted that the two weeks would be enough to recharge them completely." the dark skinned auror explained in his deep voice.

"What kind of situation are you talking about?" his uncle asked with his eyes narrowed dangerously.

"Someone tried to break into the house, someone from my world but the wards stopped them." Harry answered calmly.

Absolute silence fell over the room for five long seconds before it was shattered by his uncle's explosion.

"SOMEONE TRIED TO DO WHAT?" the man boomed, shock and anger apparent in his tone.

"Break into your house." Tonks answered the rhetorical question.

Vernon Dursley sputtered in indignation at the auror's words, unable to form any words.

"But why would they do that?" Dudley asked in confusion.

"To kill or kidnap you to get to me, or maybe they were just testing the wards for future attacks." Harry said shrugging his shoulders.

The three Dursley's stood there with their face turning white and mouths hanging open wide.

"THAT'S IT, GET OUT OF MY HOUSE YOU FREAKS. GET OUT NOW BEFORE I CALL THE POLICE." Vernon yelled, taking a threatening step forwards.

Harry shook his head at the two Aurors who had raised their wand at the man.

"I'm afraid that I can't do that Uncle, not when all your lives are in danger." he stated calmly.

"WHICH IS YOUR ENTIRE FAULT, YOUR'S AND THE FREAK OF YOUR PARENTS. FIRST THEY GET THEMSELVES BLOWNUP LEAVING YOU TO BE RAISED BY US, WHICH WE DID OUT OF THE GOODNESS OF OUR HEART AND NO HELP FROM YOU KIND. AFTER ALL WE HAVE DONE FOR YOU THIS IS HOW YOU REPAY US, BY BRINGING YOUR WAR TO OUR HOME AND PUTTING US ALL IN DANGER." The walrus like man screamed, spittle flying everywhere.

"Vernon, please calm down." Petunia pleaded, spotting her nephew's eyes turn a dark, smoky green just like her late sister's did when the redhead was about to lose her temper.

"DON'T TELL ME TO CALM DOWN PETUNIA, NOT WHEN WE WERE ALMOST KILLED IN OUR OWN HOME. COME ON PETUNIA, WE NEVER WANTED ANYTHING TO DO WITH HIM OR HIS KIND IN THE FIRST PLACE. BUT WE STILL ENDED UP WITH HIM ON OUR DOORSTEPS JUST BECAUSE HIS PARENTS WERE STUPID ENOUGH TO STICK THEIR NOSES WHERE THEY DIDN'T BELO-"

"Enough."

The word was spoken in a bare whisper but the power and anger behind it had the large man freeze mid-sentence, his face draining of any color as he finally noticed the expression on his nephew's face. Everyone inside the pristine looking room took an unconscious step back as the every single article in the said room shook threateningly as if they were about to explode. Even the Dursley's were able to feel the change that took place in the raven haired teenager, confusion and fear gracing their features, as everything about the scrawny teen seemed to become much more feral, much more dangerous.

"First of all understand the fact that the war we are fighting is not for the fate of our world, it is to decide the fate of yours, and the people we are fighting against want nothing but to enslave you or wipe out your kind entirely. And they would have succeeded too, a long time ago if not for the action of the people like my parents standing up against those maniacs at the cost of their own life. So if you think that my parents are stupid for fighting for the welfare of you 'normal' people then you are bigger idiot than I ever thought."

His uncle bristled at being called an idiot by his nephew but an intense look from the said teen made him shut his mouth before a word can leave them.

"I am here because no matter how much you hate me or want me gone from your life, you are still my relatives and I will do everything to protect you from the same bastard that killed my parents. If it means that I have to spend my holidays in your house, then I will do it gladly. Nothing you say or do will make me leave your house before the blood wards are fully charged, so why don't you save yourselves the trouble of unsuccessfully arguing with me." The boy-who-lived ranted in the same whispering voice, his breathing coming in deep breaths.

The elder Dursley's looked dumbstruck at his nephew's words while their son looked ashamed for some reason. Harry watched the three intensely as the objects around the room stopped shaking, though he never noticed it, waiting for them to make their decision though he had already made his. Ten long minutes had passed before the large man opened his mouth.

"Fine, but I won't have your kind popping up in my home." Vernon said before storming out of the room and the house.

The remaining Dursley's looked at Harry and the two Aurors nervously, unsure of what to do.

"Thank you two for your time." he said turning towards the two Aurors when it became apparent that the mother and son pair was not going to talk.

"Always a pleasure Harry, we will see you in January then. Oh, Arthur sent your trunk to your room by the way." Tonks said while Kingsley simply nodded his head and the two apparated from the living room, earning gasps of shock form the only non-magical in the room.

He then looked at his aunt for a long time before stepping towards her while rummaging his pockets.

"This is for you." he said handing over a roll of pounds to the thin woman. She looked extremely surprised as she mechanically accepted the money from her nephew.

"I don't understand." she said after starring at it for few seconds.

"My rent for the staying at your house for the holidays. I have too many things in my hands to do any of my regular chores and I will cook my own food." Harry stated before walking out of the room, ignoring the peculiar look on his aunt's face.

The smallest bedroom in the house looked same as ever, with his school trunk lying on the thin mattress of the small, rickety bed. Shifting it to the medium sized table, he laid himself down on the bed tired from the long day. Not even five minutes had passed when there was a knock on his door.

"Come in." he said with a small sigh.

"Hi Harry." His cousin greeted him, looking at him with a nervous smile. Harry sat up in the bed and looked at his cousin, puzzlement grazing his features.

"What do you want Dudley?" he asked when the teen made no move to speak.

"W-Well I wanted to apologize to y-you." Dudley stammered.

"Apologize for what exactly?" Harry inquired in a curious tone.

"For the way I have treated you since we were toddlers." the teen replied uneasily.

The boy-who-lived looked at his cousin for a long minute, making the taller teen squirm on his feet.

"What triggered the sudden change of heart after all the years of treating me like dirt? Why apologize now?" he asked suspiciously.

"You saved my life from the Demento- thing and you are here to protect my family." Dudley said shrugging his shoulders "The least I could do is to apologize to you Harry."

Harry was honestly surprised by his cousin's statement and he couldn't deny the honesty in the teen's tone. As much as he wanted to hold the grudge against the boy for making his life a living hell while growing up, he just couldn't.

"Apology accepted."

_**FLASHBACK:**_

The two had then spent at least a couple of hours talking about their school life and getting to know each other, fascinated by the things they both learnt from the other. It was during the end of the conversation that the blonde had asked him to join in his morning exercise sessions as the teen needed a partner like he did in his school. After few moments of contemplation he had agreed and it turned out to be a very good thing.

Whether it was due to the lecture that he gave or it was due the one thousand pounds he had handed over to his aunt, but they ignored him completely after the incident, except his cousin that is. They also let him eat as much as he wanted, which was over four times the amount he normally ate and they also didn't make any comments on him spending time with their son. Harry was glad that there was someone who he could talk to, which was more than he hoped for his stay with the Dursley's.

'Truthfully, it could be a whole lot worse.' He thought as he finished laying his breakfast on the dining table. Pouring himself a glass of juice, he started eating the mounds of food he had prepared to satiate his starving stomach. Twenty minutes later he finished his breakfast, wiping the plates clean and spent another five on washing the dishes before moving to his room.

Taking a seat in the chair in front of the desk in his room, Harry picked up a book bound in deep crimson leather with the title 'Aurors Handbook of Offensive Curses.', which he had received as a Christmas form Madeye and started reading it. He also received books on DADA form Hermione, Tonks, Remus, a box of chocolate frogs and a pair of seeker gloves from Ron, a golden snitch from Ginny, a large Christmas cake from Mr. and Mrs. Weasley and a whole bunch of defensive products from the twins.

Harry used a pencil he had borrowed from his cousin to practice the required wand movements for the spells in the book once he had learned the theory behind them. He was reading upon the theory behind the wide area stunner when there was a whooshing noise inside his room. Looking up, he found himself in the presence of a silver apparition in the shape of a phoenix which he immediately recognized as his Headmaster's patronus. And it opened its beak before he could even begin to contemplate the reason for its presence in his room.

"There's been a change in plans Harry. The Order members will be coming to fetch you tomorrow morning around eight, be prepared. I will explain everything once you get to Hogwarts." The patronus spoke in his Headmaster's voice.

The boy-who-lived bookmarked the page he had been reading and closed it, his brows furrowed in contemplation.

**A.N: Hope you enjoy the stories people and sorry for the long delay.**


	8. Chapter 8

**Fall**

There were at least a hundred scrolls among the thousands stacked in the numerous shelves located in the archives section of the Department of Mysteries that provides ample evidence that the magical wards were developed during the early days of the Egyptian Empire.

According to these scrolls the wards were first developed by the magicians from the Pharos court for the express purpose of enhancing the stability of buildings and structures of major importance and also to protect them from various natural elements that had the ability to be damaging, including the ravages of time.

Few centuries later these wards were successfully modified by the magicians to protect the pyramids of the Pharos from grave robbers by preventing anyone from even locating them once they had been sealed after the funeral. Years later, the priests of Anubis managed to adapt them to allow selected access to their temples or some parts within the temples that were considered to be sacred and it was soon deployed by the Pharos to protect their valuables among other things.

The wards of offensive nature weren't created until the time of the Roman Empire for their military campaigns. The records state that these types of wards were developed by the warlocks of the Roman Legions to mostly protect the messengers and the processions of vital military significance from ambushes and other attacks.

But they weren't used extensively as a result of their one serious drawback.

These wards were highly unstable in nature, meaning they would blow up in the warlocks face while they were being constructed upon even the slightest of errors. And they could only be fueled by small and constant sources of magic, like the magical energy stored within the precious stones that were magically conductive in nature like diamonds, rubies and emeralds. Hence they were easily drained by every subsequent attack upon that which is protected by them.

It was the legendary sorcerer Merlin who created the first ever stable offensive ward that could be powered by large sources of magic in a more permanent basis after years of experimentation. And according to the historical documents he used these wards to protect the key points of Avalon that were easily susceptible to attacks along with places of magical importance.

On the later centuries they were used to protect the castles and keeps of the Kings and the powerful Lords but only during time of invasions as it require a very large amount of magical energy to function. The only reason that they were even used was the sheer amount of destruction that they were capable of.

The most powerful of the offensive wards were constructed by the four founders to protect the students of Hogwarts from any kind of attacks from both wizards and muggles, and being powered by the seven leylines that run beneath the castle's foundation, they could be active for millennia if the need arises. These wards were modified and improved by every Headmaster of the school after founder's time and they were in the sole control of the current Headmaster of the magical school.

In the modern times these wards were also used to defend the manors of the Most Ancient and Noble families, and due to the recent innovation of the power rune that enables it to convert various types natural energies into magical energy, they were almost always active.

But the most powerful and most mysterious ward to ever exist in the magical world was the Blood ward. Powerful because they only required a magical being to construct and no magical energy to function, like every other wards in the magical world and they were capable of acting in offensive and defensive nature.

The first mention of these types of wards were in the scrolls that contained the history of the magical city of Atlantis where there are several mentions of blood wards being used to protect their King from the numerous assassins hired to ruin the prosperity of the city. But there weren't any records about the origin of these wards or how they were created or how they could be broken.

Hence the Blood wards remained a myth until the end of the twelfth century when a witch scarified herself selflessly with the intention of protecting her daughter. And for the rest of the girl's life, no one with harmful intent would lay a figure on her.

Through extensive research conducted by the Department of Mystery they identified that these wards could be constructed by the pure intention of protecting someone related by blood. And though it required only a few droplets of freely given blood to construct, they weren't as powerful as the ones created by the death of a witch or a wizard willingly sacrificing their life to protect their loved ones. The later was used only a handful of times after the first instance, the most recent being the Halloween of 1981.

On the night that Lord Voldemort attacked the Potter's, James Potter readily gave his life to protect his family and Lily Potter sacrificed her own so that her son could live on and these sacrifices created a blood ward of strength never seen before and it protected little Harry from the Dark Lord's killing curse, destroying his body at the same time.

Albus Dumbledore further empowered the blood ward by grounding it to No.4 Private Drive, a house where the last of little Harry's blood resided. These wards would protect those living in the house until Harry had reached his magical maturity at his seventeenth birthday or as long as one of his blood relatives survived.

But he had to spend a fixed amount of time in the Dursley home every year to renew the wards.

Even though Lord Voldemort overcame the protection upon Harry's person during his resurrection, he didn't break the wards that protected the residents of No.4 Private Drive. As long as that ward existed the Dark Lord wouldn't be able to step into the street where the house was located in, nor would any of his minions would be able to do it.

Albus Dumbledore erected the wards to protect the savior of the wizarding world from the dangerous elements that hunted him and it had held true for the fifteen years the last Potter had lived there since he had been left on its doorsteps on that chilly November night.

No one could have predicted the premature fall of the blood wards as the result of events beyond anyone's control.

IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IA

It was a normal dreary winter night in the street named Private Drive of Little Hangleton in the suburbs of Surrey, with pure white snow occupying almost all the surfaces that were exposed to the freezing weather. Identical looking two story houses stood on either sides of the road, the brightly polished brass affixed to the front of the doors proclaiming different numbers the only thing that separated them. The gardens and lawns which looked prim and proper for most of the year were painted white with the same snow and frost.

Absolute silence reigned the night with all manner of creatures sound asleep in the warms spots they had managed to procure, be it a hole dug deep underground with the body heat of the fellow occupants providing additional warmth or an artificially heated room with heavy blankets to ward off the cold. The moon that would turn full in a couple of days hung high up in the sky, almost invisible to naked eyes due to the heavy snowfall that rained down from the dark clouds.

Nobody could have known that something abnormal was about to happen in the neighborhood that appeared to be the epitome of normality, not even the rat with a single silvery front paw that was shivering underneath one of the cars parked on the roadway at the end of the street.

As the clocks all over the country started chiming twelve times, a low humming sounded across the empty street of the Private Drive, gaining pitch with every consecutive chiming leading to the twelfth hour of the midnight. Only the rat noticed the unusual sound coming from the house it had been spying upon and it froze in confusion, the cold forgotten with its beady eyes fixed upon it.

When the clocks hit twelve, a bright red light surrounded the particular house with the humming reaching it crescendo. The phenomenon lasted for few seconds before the sound and the light faded away leaving the house as it had been twenty seconds ago.

Miles away in an office located in the second tallest tower of a magnificent castle that was invisible to the normal folks, an alarm started blaring loudly driving most of the occupants of the portraits to other parts of the castle. Unfortunately no one else was present to notice it, not the long bearded Headmaster or the red and gold firebird. So after blaring for ten long minutes, it faded away to nothing.

Back in the Private Drive, the rat scurried away from the car and towards the house that had just put up the light show. Its beady black eyes bulged from the sockets when it reached the doorsteps of the said house successfully and remained there for almost a minute before realization dawned in its tiny brain. Taking one last look at the front door, it ran back as fast as its four legs could carry it back the way it had come. When it was almost a meter away from the end of the street, it stopped and grew a second later until the body of a short, skinny man replaced its tiny form. The man examined his surroundings with his watery blue eyes before disappearing from his spot with a loud crack like a gun shot.

He reappeared hundreds of miles away, a few feet away from a set of large black iron gates and he started to make his way towards it at a rapid pace. Raising his left arm in front of the gate made it turn smoky and immaterial and he walked through it before starting to run, his eyes fixed on the towering manor.

The wards around the manor kept the grounds free of any snow while the house-elves took care of the huge lawn so that it remained immaculate all round the year, something that helped making his journey to the manor a lot easier. When he finally came to a stop in front of the grandly decorated twin doors, he waited for his breathing to turn normal before knocking the silver knocker shaped like a snake head.

"Wormtail" the heavy set man who opened the door said with a sneer.

Wormtail a.k.a Peter Pettigrew ignored the said man and hurried through the open doorway and through a series of richly decorated hallways until he finally arrived at his destination. He took a deep breath to calm his nerves before gently rapping on the highly polished oak door twice.

This time the door was opened by an aristocratic man with white blonde hair that hung well past his shoulders. His light grey eyes peered at him without the any superiority like it did almost a year ago, though his lips did twist a bit in apparent distaste. It did amuse him slightly to see how low the Lord of the manor was reduced to after his failure to secure the prophesy sphere from the Department of Mysteries.

"I see that you have abandoned your mission Wormtail." The bone chilling voice came from within the room, sending shivers of fear down his spine.

Wormtail scurried into the room not missing the slight smile of anticipation that graced the Malfoy patriarch's face and walked straight towards the fireplace where his master stood with his familiar wrapped around his shoulders.

He immediately fell to his knees in front of the Dark Lord and kissed the hem of his pitch black robes. Immense pain enveloped his body even before he could raise his head and his mind was filled with the feeling of his whole body being stabbed by hundreds of white hot knives. Thankfully the curse was lifted from his body after only ten seconds leaving him gasping for breath on the polished wooden floor of the study.

"I-I b-bring n-news my L-Lord." Wormtail stuttered at his master's feet, recovering from the unforgivable. Silence greeted his statement and he dared not to raise his head as he did not want to be subjected to the torture curse again.

"And this news is significant enough to abandon your post?" came the ice cold voice with a hint of warning.

The groveling man took a deep breath to calm his bursting heart before answering.

"Yes my Lord, the blood wards around Harry Potter's house fell minutes ago."

His words elected a number of gasps from those present in the large study expect him and his master.

"Are you certain Wormtail?"

"I was able to reach the door steps of his home my Lord, the wards have certainly fallen." Wormtail answered a bit more confidently.

The high pitched laughter that rang a moment later made almost everyone in the room winch but internally, none of them had any desire to be punished by their the strongest Dark Lord in centuries.

"It seems that victory would be mine sooner than I had imagined. Raise Wormtail, you would be aptly rewarded for your information." Lord Voldemort declared and the man with the silver hand rose to his feet feeling a bit smug.

"Once you have delivered Potter to me of course."

Wormtail no longer felt smug.

"Bella, Dolohov. You will accompany Wormtail here on his mission, take enough men with you." Lord Voldemort ordered.

"Yes my Lord." said the simultaneous voices of the two inner circle members.

"I will be most displeased if you fail this mission."

"We won't my Lord." Bellatrix Lestrange said with a fanatic look on her face.

IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IA

In the smallest bedroom of the house that is about to be attacked by the followers of Lord Voldemort, the object of their obsession slept on peacefully while wearing only a pair of baggy, worn jeans and no covers despite the freezing weather outside the house. His slightly tanned face remained peaceful as he breathed deeply, his slightly muscled face raising and falling in rhythm with his every breath.

The slightly open door opened further and the small form of a cat stepped in, its padded paws muffling any noise. It's larger than average size and the shine of intelligence in its gleaming eyes identified it as a Kneazle to anyone from the magical world. The animal stopped before the bed and with a graceful leap it landed on the thin mattress without a sound. With its eyes fixed upon the sleeping teen's face it jumped onto the teen's pale face, startling him awake.

Emerald green eyes peered into glowing yellow ones, shock and confusion apparent in them.

"You are one of Figg's right, what are you doing here?" asked Harry Potter, traces of sleep still in his voice.

Said Kneazle let out a 'meow' and leaped off him before hurrying towards the rickety old table in front of the window and jumped on it with a single leap. It gave him a penetrating look and started pawing at the fogged glasses of the window.

Harry got out of the bed with a puzzled look on his face and walked to the table upon which the cat stopped pawing and sat back licking droplets of water from its paws. The puzzled look disappeared from his face as soon as he wiped the fog off the glass and took in the scene visible through it.

The light form the street lamps that got reflected off the snow covering the ground illuminated the figures dressed in black cloaks and bone white masks spread out in front of the house, some of them waving their wands around in random manner. A part of him was aware that they were erecting some kind of ward around the house but they were ignored in lieu of watching another one of Voldemort's minions, the only person who wasn't hiding her face behind a mask. The woman that was responsible for the death of his godfather, Bellatrix Lestrange. Anger and rage poured through his veins as every inch of his body demanded retribution for what she had done on that night at the Ministry almost a year ago.

Before he could start contemplating different ways of ending her pathetic existence, the Kneazle that was still sitting on his table got his attention with a loud hiss and when he looked at it, for a moment he thought it was giving him an exasperated look. Wizard and Kneazle looked at each other for few seconds before he broke his gaze.

"You are right boy I can't let revenge cloud my mind. Not when there are lives of the innocents at stake." Harry addressed the Kneazle as he moved to fetch his wand.

When he turned around after grabbing the eleven inches of holly, he found that his furry little friend had disappeared without a trace. Shaking his head he took a few steps in the direction of the door when something popped into his mind. He knelt where he had stood and pried the loose floorboards open, removing the moakskin pouch that Hagrid had given him for the Christmas. Harry left the room almost ten seconds later with the magically enchanted pouch hanging around his neck that had everyone of his possessions that he regarded priceless it along with the galleons and pounds he had got from Gringotts.

His sharp hearing indicated that the Death Eaters were yet to enter the house so he crept noiselessly towards Dudley's bed room while his brain was trying to come up with a plan to save his last living relatives without alerting the dark wizards outside. Merlin knows what they might do once they realized that he was aware of their presence and trying to save the Dursley's, probably set the house on fire with some nasty curse.

It was clear from the actions of some of them that they had erected wards to prevent apparation and portkey but he could still use his Firebolt to escape as he didn't think any of the morons outside were capable of catching on a broom and once he was out of the wards he could use the portkey around his neck.

But he had to get out the Dursley's from the house before that.

He could always perform some kind of spell so that the improper use of Magic office would be notified of the underage magic thereby notifying some of the Order members working in the Ministry like the summer after his fourth year. That is if the Death Eaters hadn't already anticipated it or had erected the ward to make the house unplotabble which would also mask any and all magic performed within it.

The solution to the most serious of his problems hit him out of nowhere when he twisted the door to his cousin's room open.

With a sigh of relief he stepped into the room that was as messy as any teenagers would be, he walked towards the queen sized bed across which laid the large form of his cousin under several layers of covers.

"Dudley." He whispered shaking the boy's shoulders insistently.

Said boy's eyes snapped open and they immediately fixed on him with the sleep draining away from them rapidly to be replaced by that of confusion.

"Harry, what are you doing here? Is something wrong?" the muscular blond asked blearily while rubbing his eyes to erase the last of the sleep from them.

"You remember the faction of fanatics following the mad man who murdered my parents I told you about?"

"Yes." Dudley said as his body tensed slightly.

"Well about a dozen of them are surrounding the house as we speak." Harry said carefully keeping his face blank.

His cousin's light blue eyes bulged in shock and Harry slapped his hand over the blonde's mouth before he could yell out the shock he felt.

"None of that big D, we don't want them knowing that we are aware of their presence. Now I have a plan to get you and your parents out of here but I need you to wake them up first. Can you do that Dudley?"

Said boy just nodded his head before rushing out of the room and Harry took the opportunity to implement his plan.

"Dobby?" he called out into the almost empty room.

There was a small pop followed by the familiar high pitched, squeaky voice of his friend addressing him in excitement.

"Master Harry Potter sir called for Dobby?" the house-elf asked with his ears quavering in excitement.

"Dobby I want you to listen to me very carefully." He paused a moment as the house-elf nodded its head excitedly "There are about Death Eaters outside this house and they will attack any moment now."

Dobby's tennis ball green eyes widened in shock and fear and he let out a loud 'eeep' before slapping his own hands over his mouth.

"It will be alright Dobby but I need to know something?"

"Anything for Master Harry Potter sir" Dobby said in a loud whisper.

"Can you take others by your method of apparation?" he queried while mentally crossing his fingers.

"Yes Master Harry Potter sir, Dobby is being able to do that." his friend answered.

"Muggles too?" the chosen one asked again.

"Dobby cans Master Harry Potter sir but it is making Dobby tired, muggles have no magic Dobby can borrow to popping."

"I need you to take my relatives to the Burrow, can you do that?"

"Dobby cans Master Harry Potter sir but how yous getting out?" Dobby asked again, fear and concern evident in his voice.

"Don't worry Dobby I have a portkey which I will activate after I fly out of the wards. It will take me to the Hogwarts and I will inform the Headmaster about the impending attack. If we are lucky, we would be capture some of them." He stated even as Dudley walked into the room with his parents in tow.

"What in the blazes is going on boy?" his uncle whispered harshly and he was sure that Dudley had informed them to keep their voices down.

"I don't have time to explain the situation Uncle," he said as he heard the front doors cracking open and then a number of footsteps "My friend Dobby will take you to the Weasley's home and I need you to remain there for the time being. Please don't ask any questions now, not if you want to live."

The walrus like man still opened his mouth but his wife cut him off.

"Not now Vernon, we can't let those animals get their hands on Dudders."

Offering her a small smile, he turned to his house-elf friend.

"Ready Dobby"

Said elf nodded his head resolutely.

"Dobby is ready Master Harry Potter sir, but Dobby is taking only two in one jump."

Harry nodded his head in acceptance.

"Alright, take Dudley and Aunt Petunia first." He advised and was grateful when his uncle didn't make any move to argue his decision.

Dobby moved in center of the two and laid a hand on each of their legs before popping away. Three seconds later he returned empty handed and laid a hand on his uncle's meaty, pajama covered thy.

"Master Harry Potter sir doesn't want to come?" he asked hopefully.

"No Dobby, I will fly out of here." Harry said with a small smile.

"Dobby will be seeing master Harry Potter sir in Hogwarts." The elf stated firmly before disappearing, taking his uncle with him.

Harry let out a sigh of relief as the first part of his plan succeeded without a hitch, though he did feel bad about lying to Dobby as he had no intention of leaving before he had extracted his revenge now that the Dursley's were out of danger. He was sure that he would be able to take on them with his recent changes and improved magical knowledge, besides the order would be arriving soon enough thanks to what he said to Dudley.

Every coherent thought left his mind as he spotted something that brought forth the rage that was shimmering at the back of his mind since he had seen Bellatrix and it filled every pore of his being. A small garden rat with a silver paw and it had its beady black eyes fixed upon him for a few moments before it scurried away in the direction of the stairway.

He didn't even think about making a decision, he just followed it with his wand already on his hand.

IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IA

"Give it up Ginny you will never be able beat Ron in chess, no one other than Dad that is." Fred Weasley said in amusement from where he had been sprawled in front of the roaring fire the latest copy of the Qudditch weekly open in front of him.

"Yup sister, no one beats Won-Won in his own game, you would get better results in Qudditch." His twin George cheekily as he looked up from his leather journal into which he had been scribbling with his quill ever since their parents had left for an order meeting almost quarter of an hour ago.

Ginny Weasley let out a snicker, her bad mood from loosing yet another game to her brother evaporating as the twins started ribbing him about his Christmas gift from his girlfriend again.

"Knock it off you prats." Ron grumbled while packing away his chess set, berating himself mentally for the hundredth time for opening his presents in front of his family.

Besides how was he to know that she would have sent that atrocious looking gold chain or the embarrassing letter that the twins had gotten hold of.

"Yeah knock it of guys, only Lavender gets to call him Won-Won," Ginny said with an absolute blank face as she got up from the arm chair "Anyone wants hot chocolate, I'm going to make one for myself."

"We" started Fred "Do" finished George.

"Hot chocolate sounds wonderful Ginny." Ron said, all signs of irritation vanishing from his features.

The only Weasley daughter had taken only a couple of steps when a loud pop sounded, announcing the arrival of one weirdly dressed house-elf and its two passengers. All the Weasley's were upon their feet with their wands drawn, their bodies tensed ready to defend themselves and their family until they realized the identity of the house-elf and two humans accompanying it. Said house-elf popped away before they could lower theirs wands and returned a second later with the last of their friend Harry Potter's relatives. They were surprised for a moment when the large man jumped away from the elf while looking at it with disgust and cursing like a sailor, only the sound of the elf popping away again shook them away from it.

"You are the Weasley's right?" the well muscled blond asked in a highly tensed voice breaking the silence and they discovered it to be a rhetorical question when he continued before they could answer "You guys got to help Harry, he said that the Death Eaters are surrounding our home before he sent us here."

The jovial look on the twins face disappeared at once.

"Where is he?" asked Ginny scared for the life of her friend.

"He said something about going to your school to alert his Headmaster." Dudley answered.

"But Dumbledore is at the Headquarters." Ron stated in a strained voice, his ears turning red to indicate his nervousness.

"M-Master H-Harry P-Potter-r sir is no-t a-arriving a-at H-Hogwarts."

Almost everyone were startled at the unexpected voice and they looked in its direction to find an exhausted looking house-elf kneeling on the floor while breathing heavily.

"Right, George watch over Dobby. Ginny take care of the Dursley's, Ron you help her while I head to the Headquarters to alert the Order." Fred said in a serious tone as he walked towards the urn containing the floo powder.

IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IA

"Are there any questions?" Albus Dumbledore asked as they finished discussing the wards that had been erected around the Weasley family home for the arrival of one Harry James Potter.

Silence greeted his query for a few seconds before the Weasley patriarch broke it by asking the question that was in the minds of everyone present inside the large dining room of the Black family home.

"The blood wards were fully recharged early this morning and I thought that young Harry would like to spend the few days before the beginning of the new term with his friends." Dumbledore answered with a genial smile.

"But you said that whole of the holidays won't be enough to bring them up to three quarters of their strength." Molly Weasley asked puzzled.

"And they would have been if Harry and his cousin hadn't put aside their differences and treated each other like a member of their family."

The three Weasley's took a moment to digest the information along with its implications and before they could open their mouth to form a reply, the fireplace burst into bright green flames indicating an incoming floo connection.

"The Dursley's are at the Burrow and Harry's cousin says that they were attacked by the Death Eaters. Harry is still there." The deadly serious voice of one of the twins said from the fireplace, freezing everyone but the Headmaster.

"Arthur, gather as many of the Order as you can and head to the Private Drive." Dumbledore commanded before disappearing in a flash of flame thanks to his familiar.

IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IAW- IA

Dumbledore appeared a second later in the middle of an intense battle that at a first glance appeared to be very one sided but that was only until one took in the seven immobile forms laying on the ground some unconscious and some moaning in pain. His intense blue eyes immediately latched onto the teen he considered to be his grandson and a sense of shock and puzzlement assaulted him when he noticed the number of changes that he seemed to be undergone in two short weeks, the most noticeable being the lack of the lightning bolt scar on his forehead. But he filed the questions away for later when Tom's followers finally noticed his presence.

The large ball of golden red flames appearing in mid air distracted the participants of the impromptu battle for a few moments and the teen who was grossly outnumbered took the opportunity to put two of his opponents out of commission. But the remaining half a dozen members shook off their surprise and started firing non lethal spells at the teen and more lethal ones at the leader of the light who had just appeared a few feet away from them.

The ancient Headmaster quickly dispatched the four members who had attacked him and made a move to aide his student when he saw Bellatrix Lestrange fire off the fiendfyre towards No.4 Private Drive. Sickly orange flames in the shape of a chimera impacted the house and spread out at a rapid pace, becoming larger and stronger with everything it consumed. He struggled to make a decision whether to prevent the cursed flames or to help Harry when the said teen made the decision for him.

"Headmaster, take care of the fire before it spreads to the other houses."

He would have normally disregarded the statement but seeing the ease with which the sixth year was handling Bellatrix and Dolohov, he moved to stand in front of the blazing house. His wand moved with practiced ease as he tried to take control of the fiendfyre before he could put it out. The leader of light was so focused on controlling the cursed flames to save the muggle neighborhood that he didn't notice the dueling trio continued to get nearer to him with the passage of every second.

Harry dodged yet another stunner from the deranged woman and a bone breaker aimed at his legs from Antonian Dolohov, glad not for the first time for the changes that his encounter with the vampire had inflicted upon his body. He twisted his body with impressive speed and grace possessed by one of those professional acrobats he had seen in the television, to avoid two more curses from his opponents fired simultaneously and they passed on either side of his body almost gracing his ill fitting shirt. Four spells left his wand even as he came to a stop but they were stopped by the shields the pair of Death Eaters erected.

'I hope Dumbledore puts out the fire soon as I don't know how long I can keep this going on.'

The through ran through his mind as he concentrated on dodging the rapid fire of curses that were fired at him, all of them more lethal than the ones they had used before the arrival of the Headmaster. It wasn't hard to come to the conclusion that the pair were getting desperate to capture him before Dumbledore could come to his aide, something he was hoping for as he was getting progressively weaker in both physical and magical sense.

Harry froze in shock and fear when the two inner circle Death Eaters suddenly turned their attention to the Headmaster by firing a killing curse each, and from what he had read Harry knew that his mentor couldn't stop what he was doing as that would result in the flames turning on him before spreading far and wide. Thankfully Fawkes appeared in a ball of flame, swallowing one of the dark green curses before bursting into flames that burned almost instantly leaving behind only a pile of ash. Harry blocked the other with the hastily conjured block of marble thanking Hermione for the book on advanced Transfiguration that she had lent him.

Unfortunately the momentary distraction was enough for his opponents to get the drop on him and felt more than saw the two overpowered stunners a few feet away from impacting him. Murphy's Law kicked in a moment before the spells hit him as they both combined into a single spell which impacted his body with the force of a freight train. It lifted him clean off his feet and launched him backwards with an alarming speed, directly into his relative's house burning with blazing orange flames.

Intense blue eyes widened with fear as they watched the last Potter being bodily launched into the burning wreckage of a house that he had been trying to put off and he doubled his efforts to save him before it was too late, ignoring the twin cracks of apparation signaling the escape of the two responsible for the situation.

**A.N: Sorry for the long wait, thank everyone for their wonderful reviews. R&R please.**


End file.
